Growing up in the '80s meant a lot of us spent a lot of our time fearing the Russians. Despite besting them in a legendary hockey series in 1972, we still recoiled from their repressive and isolationist society, their aggressive military posturing, their rumoured intelligence gatherers (i.e. spies) and of course, their missiles.
Even the popular culture of the day made the Soviet Union an uncompromising, intimidating heavy. From the occupation forces targeting the teenage resistance fighters in Red Dawn to the menacing bulk of Ivan Dragon in Rocky IV, the message was clear: there were two primary ideologies on the globe, and they did not play nicely with others.
Then suddenly while I was in college - pop! The wall goes down and the Soviet Union dissolves into its component parts. Pink Floyd played a concert featuring "The Wall" in Potsdamer Platz, right where the widest strip of the death zone used to be, and we all breathed a sigh of relief that all that brinksmanship was behind us!
Three decades later, the brinksmanship is back, and it feels worse than it ever did in the 80s.
On the plus side, Ukraine is still holding on, stubbornly, defiantly, maintaining control of their capital and huge swaths of the west of their country as well. Sanctions are in the process of hobbling Russia's economy, and aid and donations for Ukraine are flowing in from across much of the globe. Less positively, The advancement hasn't actually stopped, just slowed down, we are racing headline into a massive humanitarian crisis in besieged Mariupol, and direct conflict between Russia and NATO has a growing sense of inevitability.
And why?
Because one man wished it so: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
An ex-KGB officer who became president of Russia less than a decade after entering politics, and has run the show in that country ever since. Hijacking elections, intimidating and poisoning political opponents, and re-jigging the constitution to ensure he can effectively remain President-for-life.
Many people ascribe his desire to bring Ukraine into his domain the way he annexed Crimea in 2014 as a means of restoring the former glory and greater sphere of influence held by the former Soviet Union, whose demise he still mourns, but I fear it is worse than that.
I fear it is vanity.
The moment I became most afraid of Putin was not when he left the presidency to become prime minister for four years, before returning once again to the presidency. It wasn't when I discovered he was a legitimate Red spy and a black belt in judo.
No, it was when I saw him score an unbelievable number of staged goals in a hockey game against professional Russian athletes, players half-heartedly chipping at the puck when he had it and lifting their goalie pads to ensure his shots became goals whenever possible. Less than 90 days ago he 'scored' seven goals as part of an 18-7 rout of the opposing team, while troops and tanks were filing up on the Ukrainian border for "military exercises." (Also, please note how the National Post makes no effort whatsoever to indicate what a sham this allegedly athletic contest is.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xg9r2B4-do
The first time I saw this, it troubled me deeply and on many levels.
This man is vain, I thought, tragically, emptily vain.
And he doesn't care who he has to co-opt in order to serve that vanity.
And he has enough power to make other people do things they wouldn't ordinarily consider, like athletes throwing a game, or looking like dupes in doing so.
And worst of all, I can't tell if Putin is deluded enough to believe he really is that good, or just cynical enough not to care if many people know how fake his prowess actually is.
He trots this all-star game nonsense out almost once a year, stoking the fires of his legendary manhood and toughness and pumping up his ego in the same way as his legendary bare-chested horseback riding photo ops.
And I don't have a lot of time for American politician Marco Rubio, but he made the chilling Putin even scarier when he suggested the Russian autocrat's motivations may be tied to an increased sense of mortality, since, at 69, he is only 2-3 years away from the average lifespan of a Russian male. (The World Bank puts it at 73.08, but still.)
Despite his embracing of the more conservative angles of the Russian Orthodox church, I am not confident that Vladimir Putin believes in any sort of afterlife. Even if he does, it is even money on whether he knows he is going to hell and doesn't care, or honestly believes that ginning up a story about Nazis oppressing Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine legitimizes his invasion of a sovereign state and will mitigate the growing list of war crimes he is accumulating, permitting him entry past the pearly gates.
The most likely scenario is that he simply doesn't care at all, and that combination of apathy and atavism, when backed by nuclear arms, makes me extremely uncomfortable. NATO's goal of staying out of direct conflict with Russia's armed forces makes even more sense when the very real prospect of nuclear war is not only on the table but actively being cited by the belligerent party.
And you tell me what's worse: this madman from St. Petersburg, or his apologists in the U.S. Republican party? Tucker Carlson of Fox News is a regular feature on Russian television (by request of the Kremlin, no less!) and has no problem describing Ukraine as being "not a real country" to his audience of bigoted Trumpites. Politician Tulsi Gabbard is only too happy to amplify Russian claims about biolabs in Ukraine researching weapons, when their neighbour to the east is actually the one in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention.
It is difficult to see any sort of constructive resolution to the war in Ukraine. Even if Russia sorts out its logistical failings and manages to drive the elected government out of Kyiv and install some sort of governor or puppet, there will be no easy way to effectively subdue the inevitable insurgency. Even if Putin were to recognize the sunk cost fallacy of his current operations and pull back across the border tomorrow, the demolition will take decades to fix. And regardless of all else, the sanctions and isolation facing Russia will put a deep and abiding discomfort upon the entire country for years.
Perhaps the best hope is the one most sensible people are reluctant to mention: that at some point enough Russians are going to realize the true cost of this war (which they cannot call a war in Russia) in both precious lives and worthless rubles, driven by the vanity of one man desperately clinging to both power and glory, is too much for any country to pay, even one as old and as proud as Russia.
Perhaps with this ill-conceived (and apparently fictitiously presented) invasion of Ukraine, Putin has, at last, bitten off more than he can chew.
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