At 73 years old, Putin Remains at the World Powers’ Table, Probably as the Chess Master

Chosen by Boris Yeltsin to succeed him in power, Vladimir Putin would become president of the Russian Federation at just 46 years old. He was adored by the Western press. A prime minister admired by leaders gathered in world congregations. Consulted on various security and economic development issues of the world, Putin would become a star of world politics. Yeltsin handed him the mandate of power. He trusted him. In the year he came to power, America was optimistic about his meteoric rise. Let’s not forget that Yeltsin laid the foundations, together with Bush, the father of the “NATO-Russia Founding Act,” in 1997. He left Russia’s request for NATO membership with a death sentence. The old wolf of devouring the last traces of the Soviets had already negotiated this desire with Bill Clinton. All that was left was to initial a historic agreement. In his memoir “Presidential Marathon,” Boris Yeltsin spoke of his successor as president of the Russian Federation: “a person with a backbone, who would strengthen the political structure of authority” and who would “understand the new Russia” detached from communism.

When he was not being prelate by Western secret services, world chess champion Garry Kasparov declared that Vladimir Putin was exactly what Russia needed: “The government needed to show strength and confidence in order to gain popular support for the implementation of painful reforms.” Later, he transformed or was transformed into a dissident of Putin. “Yeltsin was convinced that Vladimir Putin would continue his work of transforming the country, knowing that he was an intelligent, curious man who always asked questions. Having worked with him since 1996, he appreciated him as a loyal man who did not rise through relations with the communists, so he did not have to change his attitude after the collapse of the USSR. At the same time, he looked different from the former old communists, being younger, small, thin, and well-dressed in European suits, presenting himself as a representative of the new Russian generation and, thus, hoping that he would be accepted as president.

Also, entrepreneur Boris Berezovsky and economist Anatoli Ciubais agreed with his choice, appreciating him as an intelligent, sociable, and active man.” writes Simona Vrăbiescu-Kleckner, an American citizen, member of the US Republican Party, and former advisor to the President of Romania, Emil Constantinescu, in her book “Ulmările pretescului. Anii 1989-2008 și 2014-2022.” How he alienated his collaborators and close associates, some of whom were even killed by unknown forces, blaming the all-powerful leader Putin for the assassinations without evidence, is part of the legacy of imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, state formations that ruled through social terror and hesitated to fully embrace the grammar of modernity, even when reform was imperative. Imperial Russia has always lagged behind the West. It did not enjoy a revolution in the 1840s. On the contrary, since the Crimean War, power has only had revolutionary oppositions, which resorted to public agitation, culminating in the peasant uprising fueled by the spirit of Pugachev.

From Kievan Russia to the Stalinist regime, Russian liberalism would be crushed between the militant radical bloc and autocracy. Putin’s rise to power was welcomed, especially by Western leaders. They supported the little animal lover, believing they could train him like a poodle. George W Bush visited him seven times in Moscow, without finalizing the Russian Federation’s requests to negotiate an agreement with NATO. Simona Vrăbiescu Kleckner even dares to address Russia’s request to join NATO, in her samizdat book (no publisher wanted to publish her book “Traces of the Past”) Vladimir Putin would be nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Again without success.

Before the famous surprise visit to the 2008 Summit in Bucharest, where Bush Jr., contrary to the recommendations of his experts, proposed the expansion of NATO to Ukraine and Georgia, “Time” magazine proclaimed him “Man of the Year.” Learning of the American leader’s intentions, Putin boarded a plane and landed in Bucharest. He warned the alliance leaders that he would retaliate. In vain. He invaded South Ossetia. The West remained frozen in the NATO security corridor project and the need to distance itself from Russia. The American Deep State organized the famous Euromaidan in Kiev and the coup d’état in the country artificially created by V.I. Lenin, in 1921. Khrushchev gave the territories in eastern Ukraine as a gift. In 2014, under the pretext of defending the Russian population in the three counties, the Russian army intervened. In February 2022, under the title of “Special Operations,” the Russian army invaded Ukraine. At the age of 73 (his birthday is today, October 7, November 7 marks the anniversary of the 1917 coup d’état), despite the catastrophic predictions of the unicorns in the Western media, he has the power to influence and even lead the geopolitics of the world.

Present last week at the Vandai Club, a kind of Russian think-tank, he solved, for four hours, with mathematical rigor, all the predictive equations from the future of relations with the US, to the polycentrism of tomorrow’s world, but also about the dissolution of the European concept, talking about a fragmentation of the EU. In fact, he admitted for the first time that he supports nationalist movements in Western Europe, criticizing the way in which Brussels canceled the elections in Romania on the grounds that a leader who was not popular with the establishment would have won. Vladimir Putin remains like a heavy piece on the world’s chessboard, despite Trump’s Gambit and the demiurgic presence of the “partner without limits,” Xi Jimping.

By Marius Ghilezan