During his press conference on Thursday, February 24, 2022, a reporter directed the following question to President Biden: “Did you underestimate Putin, and would you still describe him the way that you did in the summer as a “worthy adversary”?” (“President Biden Announces New Sanctions, Warns Vladimir Putin’s Ambitions Are Larger Than Ukraine”) To which the president responded:
“At the time, he was. I made it clear he was an adversary and I said he was worthy. I didn’t underestimate him.
And I’ve read most of everything he’s written [my formatting]. … You heard the speech he made, almost hour’s worth of speech as to why he was going into Ukraine. He has much larger ambitions than Ukraine. He wants to, in fact, reestablish the former Soviet Union [my formatting].”(“President Biden Announces New Sanctions, Warns Vladimir Putin’s Ambitions Are Larger Than Ukraine”)
With all due respect Mr. President, in this dark hour of grave peril, the world cannot afford you, the President of the United States, to completely misunderstand your Russian counterpart! For someone who—precisely 15 SECONDS BEFORE—said that he’s read ‘most of everything he’s [Putin] written,’ it is absolutely terrifying to hear the same person uttering an order of words incarnating a thorough misunderstanding of Putin’s intentions! Admittedly, Putin’s ambitions transcend well beyond Ukraine; but, that is not one and the same as reestablishing the same construct (i.e. the Soviet Union) that he [Putin] unequivocally and emphatically holds responsible for Russia’s lost footing in Europe—more so, responsible for its residual domestic woes—even the substantial reduction of its dominion and, eventually, diminishing its world status.
For the TRUTH of the matter is this:
In that ‘hour’s worth speech,’ Mr. President,—whether you watched it or read its transcript—Putin was most keen to explicate and corroborate that the current feud with ‘modern Ukraine’ would not have transpired if it wasn’t for the Soviet leadership policy of making concessions to the other republics [“nationalists on the outskirts of the former Russian Empire,” (“Russian President Putin Recognizes Independence of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine’s Donbas Region”)] at the expense of Russia in order to keep them in the Soviet bloc—more precisely, ‘for the Bolsheviks to stay in power at all cost’ (“Russian President Putin Recognizes Independence of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine’s Donbas Region”). He even explicitly called Ukraine—modern Ukraine, that is—“Lenin’s Ukraine.” And the sensus communis take away from what he said is that Lenin, right after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, had carved Ukraine out of Russia—i.e. the Russian Empire—, piece by piece, and Khrushchev continued his work in the 1960s.
One ought also to underscore that he condemned ‘Lenin’s principles of building the state’ as worse than a mere mistake. So, how did you Mr. President infer from what he said that he wants to reestablish a system that Putin has had insinuated, time and again, that it had committed unforgivable injustices against Russia throughout the process of building its [the Soviet system’s] state?
And, for the record, in his speech at the plenary session of the 18th annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in October 2021, Mr. President, Vladimir Putin criticized the contemporary “social reforms” in the United States—and the West, at large—vis-á-vis family values and gender identity, via drawing the analogy between these measures and those of the Soviets—those resulted in rupture of familial ties, and moral decadence (“Valdai Discussion Club Meeting”).
With utmost respect, you have confused the antithesis for the thesis, Mr. President. Putin is bound to revive the Russian glory ante [emphasis added] the Bolshevik Revolution, which is peculiar [emphasis added] to Tzarist Russia; not to otherwise reestablish the very system that brought its ultimate demise.
In fine, I think you should fire your Russia/Putin experts.
Reference
“President Biden Announces New Sanctions, Warns Vladimir Putin’s Ambitions Are Larger Than Ukraine.” C-SPAN.org, 24 Feb. 2022, www.c-span.org/video/?518182-1/president-biden-announces-sanctions-warns-vladimir-putins-ambitions-larger-ukraine. Accessed 26 Feb. 2022.
“Russian President Putin Recognizes Independence of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine’s Donbas Region.” C-SPAN.org, www.c-span.org/video/?518097-2/russian-president-putin-recognizes-independence-donetsk-luhansk-ukraines-donbas-region. Accessed 26 Feb. 2022.
Valdai Discussion Club Meeting. 21 Oct. 2021, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66975. Accessed 31 Oct. 2021.
