Referendums, Annexations, Prison for Deserters … Putin Follows in the Footsteps of Stalin.
Putin's madness could lead to his downfall.
The amendment fell on March 4, 2022, eight days after the beginning of the invasion of the Russian army in Ukraine ordered by Vladimir Putin. Anyone who denigrates the Russian army can be sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
How then can we not think of the terrible sanctions that Stalin inflicted in 1941 on those he called the “panickers,” whose only crime was to report to the Kremlin the collapse of the Red Army, in full retreat before the Wehrmacht?
More recently, the measures taken by the head of the Kremlin are strongly reminiscent of the decrees of the “Red Tyrant” during the Great Patriotic War. On September 24, 2022, the Russian president enacted prison sentences for any soldier who surrendered or refused to fight. And if he runs away? Bad idea, especially if he is caught by the National Guard. Putin is reviving the “barrage units” (zagrad otdely) set up by Stalin in the summer of 1942 to shoot anyone who retreats.
Stalin even coined a slogan at the time: “Not a step back!” We are not far from this with the new measures taken by Vladimir Putin.
When he went to recruit fighters from prisons, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close associate of Putin's linked to the mercenary group Wagner, warned them that deserters would be executed without trial. By the way, getting cannon fodder from the internment camps is not a new idea. Stalin - always him - had tested it. Formed of convicts from the Gulag, Stalin's disciplinary battalions (Shtrafbat) were sent to the front line. If they survived, the ex-convicts regained their civil rights.
In politics, too, Stalin's arm guides that of his putative heir Vladimir Putin. The organization of illegal referendums on September 20, 2022, on the annexation of four Ukrainian regions (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia) is reminiscent of the invasion of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia by the Red Army in June 1940. A total of 170,000 Balts were killed or deported, and “elections” were held. These elections, which were not really held, led to the creation of People's Assemblies, which voted massively to join the Soviet Union.
What Putin is doing is therefore a typical Stalinist method. The coups de force are always hidden under a legalistic camouflage. This was the trademark of the KGB. They taught the recipes for the power of Lenin and Stalin. Vladimir Putin has taken from it an absolute faith in manipulation. This belief that it is enough to corrupt and intimidate has led the head of the Kremlin to make catastrophic mistakes.
Which could well cause his downfall with the humiliating defeat that is looming for the Russian army in Ukraine.
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