Putin will Declare Any Outcome in Ukraine a Victory and His Alone, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 5 – Putin said recently that he has never regrated becoming Russian president, a reflection of his effort to present himself to the Russian population as “a superman” who is all-knowing and never makes mistakes, Abbas Gallyamov says. And that means that the Kremlin leader will present any outcome in Ukraine as a victory.

    In this, the commentator continues, he will be following Stalin who recognized how important it was that after 1945, the Soviet people saw the Kremlin dictator as the author of the victory over the Germans lest they acquire a sense of their own agency and decide at some future point to challenge him and his rule (pointmedia.io/story/6819ba69e25aea416748a7a3).

    The less evidence there is that the outcome represents a Russian victory, Gallyamov argues, the more passionately Putin and his regime will insist on that because with each passing month, the Russian people will begin to feel the impact of  the war even after its end and begin asking questions that the regime cannot afford to have them ask.