It’s Putin’s Fault!

If Vladimir Putin did not exist, he would have to be invented. This is, in any case, what the leaders of the oligarchic regime that rules the Western world through fear, lies and corruption, think. In order to achieve their ends, they need to create an enemy, and for that they need a scapegoat who will bear the full weight of their mistakes. And the fabrication of information is essential for the fabrication of the enemy.

They have therefore found an easy way to clear their name in the eyes of their population by attributing to this public enemy, which has become the enemy of humanity, their own strategy of world domination.

To explain their own infringements of people’s rights, all they have to do is to claim at every turn: “It’s Putin’s fault!” This is the key to the process that, since the end of the world war, has led to a fratricidal war in Ukraine and to the rupture between Russia and the West, the consequences of which are incalculable.

Doctor Angela and Mrs. Merkel

However, one cannot clear the responsibility of Russia, of the Russians and of Vladimir Putin himself in the evolution that led to this disaster. It is certainly not a question of giving credence to accusations that feed a Russophobia that the war in Ukraine has exacerbated, by extending to all Russians a discredit that previously tended to oppose Vladimir Putin and the interests of Russia and Russians. From now on, it is the whole Russian people; it is the fact of being Russian alone which is the object of a hateful and contemptuous rejection.

But it must be recognized that the Russians, by ratifying the changes that brought about the end of the Cold War and by carrying out self-destructive reforms, are themselves at the origin of this “demonization,” sought by the United States and carried out with the help of their victims. Drunk with their hubris and confident in their victory, the sorcerer’s apprentices who have taken the reins of the West do not realize that they are endangering world peace and security. But they would never have taken this path if Russia, after having put an end to the USSR, had not encouraged them to take it.

General Desportes, one of the few intelligent, honest and informed observers of political life, indicated in a recent interview one of the keys, according to him, to a war that will undoubtedly only result in defeated people, recalling the words of Vladimir Putin, who, when asked by Mrs. Merkel what his greatest mistake was, replied: “It is to have trusted you.”

Zinoviev’s Lesson on the “Global Supra-Society”

The Russians have every reason to blame their leaders for having actively contributed to their downfall. But, accustomed to passivity in the face of their rulers, they did not react after their refusal to put an end to the USSR in the referendum organized by Gorbachev and left unresolved. It was only after having suffered the consequences of this self-destruction in the sinister 1990s, under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, that they endorsed the recovery policy undertaken by Vladimir Putin.

The results obtained explain the popularity of the latter. But, as he himself recognized in his answer to Mrs. Merkel, he is not himself exempt from responsibility in the subjugation of his country to foreign powers that unscrupulously practice double standards.

To better understand the game that is currently being played between Russia and the West through Ukraine, one must go back to the end of the Cold War, marked by the reunification of Germany and the self-dissolution of the USSR by its president Gorbachev. Gorbachev’s death gave rise to a discreet tribute from the Europeans and a hostile silence from the Russians, who did not forgive him for having betrayed the state for which he was responsible.

If Gorbachev had the merit of putting an end to communism, he also destroyed the Russian power, built by the Soviet Union, in the heritage of the tsarist empire. In the Russian collective consciousness, he trampled on a history of which he was the heir. This concordance has been very well analyzed by Alexander Zinoviev in his book, Global Suprasociety and Russia. In his conclusion, Zinoviev wrote:

The Gorbachev-Yeltsinian treason is the greatest treason in the history of mankind by its main parameters, by the importance of its participants, by its degree of calculation and premeditation, by its social level, by its consequences for many countries and peoples, by its role in the evolution of mankind. So, if we Russians have been robbed of the right to be the first to discover a new way, the communist way, of the social evolution of mankind, we should at least recognize that we are the champions in the sphere of treason.

The Non-Implementation of the Minsk Agreements

At the root of this betrayal is the Western syndrome and the democratic mirage. In Russia Under the Avalanche, in 1998, Solzhenitsyn described the collapse of his country and the decay of a society left to be plundered by the bandits in power, in the name of democracy. In his reports, he revealed the despair of a population that had lost faith in its future. But some people still believed in the arrival of a providential man who would save Russia.

When Vladimir Putin took power and brought the oligarchs to heel, restoring the state’s sovereignty, he identified himself with this savior who was restoring Russia’s history and memory. And this sheds light on the support of his population in a war that does not speak its name and for which the Russian people are called to suffer, in flesh and soul.

This is why Russophobia, which associates in the same demonization the Russians and their president, is not totally wrong. Faced with a crusade that reminds the Russians of other crusades that they have defeated by their heroism and self-sacrifice, the people are united to their tsar. But there is a difference between patriotic wars and the invasion of a brother-country, accused of treason.

And if it has come to this, it is because Vladimir Putin was mistaken as much about a Ukraine that he thought was subservient as about a Europe that never wanted to apply the “Minsk agreements,” intended to peacefully resolve the conflict between the government of Kiev and the separatist republics. And if he made this mistake, it is because, in spite of what he said, he continued, in his relations with the “collective West,” to trust enemies that he took for partners.

Dangers of a War that will not be Named, Until It’s Over

By calling this invasion a “special operation,” Vladimir Putin was undoubtedly aware of the impossibility of waging a war, a real war, a total war, against Ukraine, guilty of being in a pact with the West.

Clausewitz had warned against the danger of waging war without wanting to do so, since war is only the continuation of politics by other means. The Russian army, obliged to wage war, not to defend its own country but to attack another country, whatever the reasons for doing so, is now seeing the truth of this warning. Between a shameful peace and nuclear escalation, the die is now cast and Russia, Europe and the world are facing an uncertain future. NATO strategists, who have provoked this war to maintain the existence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, may well come to regret their decision.

And it will be useless yelling, to clear themselves of their own responsibility—”It’s Putin’s fault!


Gérard Conio, professor emeritus of the University Nancy-2, edited the fabulous book series, “Classiques slaves” at the l’Age d’Homme publishing house. This article appears courtesy of Éléments.