Obsessed with continuing the war, he gives direct orders to the generals, is not responsible and ignores any advice
The general discontent in Russian society about the “devastating, bloody and unjustified war” that President Vladimir Putin has unleashed against the neighboring country, against Ukraine, whose inhabitants, like the Russians, are East Slavs and have always been treated as “brothers” considered, is more than palpable. More and more businessmen, artists, former senior officials, economists and scientists are fleeing Russia. They lay down their positions, liquidate their companies, leave their chairs, leave their theaters or cancel shows.
Even among those closest to Putin, there are disagreements. The Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, Valeri Gerasimov, the Director of the FSB (former KGB), Alexánder Dvornikov, or the Commander-in-Chief of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Igor Ósipov, they seem nothing more Paint. Nominally, they maintain their positions, but Putin no longer trusts them for misjudging the offensive, for the high casualty rate and for the slowness with which the troops’ advance is progressing.
Political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky claims that “Putin has personally started leading the military operation in Ukraine” with direct orders to officers on the ground. In his words, “Operation Z remains under Putin’s full control. There is not a single figure that can impose a solution that he is not interested in. The Russian president, according to Belkovsky, “admits that the start of the offensive was unsuccessful and that what should have been a blitzkrieg has failed. Therefore, he decided to take command, as Tsar Nicholas II did during the First World War.
The high casualty rate among Ukrainian civilians, the atrocities committed in Bucha, the heavy casualties on both sides, the destruction of entire cities, as happened with Mariupol, and the lack of solid arguments to justify the war from the back down. His practically absolute power allows him to ignore any sensible advice for want of counterbalance and a more collegial leadership.
And it is that hardly anyone in Russia has concentrated so much power in over a hundred years that he has given himself the luxury of acting alone. He even allows himself to publicly insult his closest associates, as happened on February 21, three days after the war against Ukraine started, when, during a Security Council meeting broadcast on the main television channels, the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergei Naryshkin.
In the Tsarist era, the Russian crown was still an example of absolutism in Europe, although the power of those monarchs was sometimes divided into the hands of relatives and favorites. One of the characters who most influenced Nicholas II’s decisions was the monk Grigori Rasputin, who considered his wife Alejandra an “enlightened one”.
After the October Revolution (1917), the power of its leader, Vladimir Lenin, despite being decisive, was in some way subject to the control of the Soviets and the Politburo, the highest governing body and on a permanent basis. Later, when Joseph Stalin was already in the Kremlin, the plots were woven at the level of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Politburo, some members of which were eventually purged, sent to the Gulag or shot. Stalin managed to install a bloody dictatorship, but sometimes under the supervision of the Politburo or some of its members, as was the case with Lavrenti Beria.
All CPSU Secretaries General had more than significant weight in decision-making, but were not lost sight of by the party leadership. To the point that, as happened to Nikita Khrushchev, they could be fired. All the others (Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev) were obliged to adhere to the general guidelines of the party congresses, the Central Committee and the Politburo.
After the collapse of the USSR, Putin’s predecessor, Borís Yeltsin, launched a new constitution with a decidedly presidential character. He did so after an armed confrontation with parliament, which he fired on mercilessly. However, Yeltsin was subject to de facto powers such as business, the media and to some extent controlled by parliament. He also respected the judiciary. Despite numerous flaws, the elections were labeled “democratic” by the international community. The first president of post-Soviet Russia also had to deal with the military, especially after he started a catastrophic war in Chechnya.
However, the current Russian president from the first moment started to dismantle the imperfect democracy that his mentor had built. First, it strengthened its already vast powers until it achieved a centralization comparable only to that of the Stalin era, albeit with the semblance of democracy. He then had the property, especially in the energy sector, change hands in favor of like-minded entrepreneurs. Thus it carried out a secret nationalization of the main economic sectors.
Later he undertook it with the independent press. Television channels, radio stations and major newspapers were bought by state-owned companies, such as Gazprom’s energy monopoly, or by companies run by oligarchs loyal to the president.
The next step was to strengthen so-called “vertical power,” which led to the abolition of regional governor elections, a draconian and arbitrary party law, an unprecedented screening of non-governmental organizations and the passage of a law against extremism that punishes everyone. who does not share the official position.
The two Houses of Parliament, taken over by the Kremlin party «United Russia», are real appendages of the Presidency and Justice is a transmission belt of its political interests, as has been demonstrated in clearly manipulated trials, including the trial enforcing in captivity of the main opposition leader, Alexei Navalni.
As Navalni points out, there is no division of powers in Russia, nor authentic democratic elections, since according to his research manipulation of the voting results is the order of the day. Putin arranged for the Constitution to be amended in 2020 to allow for two more terms, meaning he would remain at the head of the country until 2036.
Putin has always used the intelligence services to dismantle the precarious democracy built by his predecessor. The need for a “strong state” was always an obsession for him. Many ended up in jail that way. Others were shot or poisoned without, in most cases, making clear who ordered the crimes. The number of political exiles is increasing and now, after the invasion of Ukraine, it has increased so much that the Russian president has managed to rid the country of opponents.
The result of this ruthless policy is that Putin has removed every counterweight. He has a power comparable to that of Stalin and even more, since he is not accountable to a “central committee”. He himself affirms that only the “people” can question his decisions, order him or remove him. And that is measured by elections that his opponents have always regarded as rigged. So only the president is the only decision center in Russia, the only one who gives the orders regarding the armed intervention in Ukraine.
Source: La Verdad
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