Vladimir Putin: Re-writing history in a tragic way

“During the 2nd World War, a Russian soldier came home from the front lines for a short break. When he approached the apartment where he lived with his wife, he saw a pile of bodies stacked in the street and men loading them into a waiting flatbed truck for burial.

“As he went nearer, he saw a woman’s legs wearing shoes that he recognised as his wife’s. He ran and demanded his wife’s body. After having convinced them the soldier held his wife in his arms realised that she was alive. She regained her health after good medical care. Eight years later, in 1952, their son Vladimir Putin was born.”

This dramatic story exemplifies the circumstances surrounding the birth of the President of Russia, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who has for the past few weeks been hitting the headlines for launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, considered as an independent, democratic and sovereign nation.

Several posts have gone viral on the social media, especially Facebook and WhatsApp platforms attributing the story to a book written by former United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, titled: Hard Choices.

Young Putin

In the memoir, published in 2014, Hillary Clinton recalled a conversation where Putin told her how his father saved his mother during the Siege of Leningrad when she was mistakenly thought to be dead and nursed her back to health. “He launched into a story about his parents that I had never heard or read about…

“Obviously, I have no way to verify Putin’s story, but I’ve thought of it often. For me, it sheds some light on the man he has become and the country he governs. He’s always testing you, always pushing the boundaries,” she wrote.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a flag raising ceremony on the ferry Marshal Rokossovsky via a video link at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow on March 4, 2022. (Photo by Alexey NIKOLSKY / SPUTNIK / AFP)

While speaking briefly about his family, his childhood and his career at the KGB among other things, Putin did not reveal much about his childhood, which he spent in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg).

Though he recounts the tale of his mother almost being taken away with other dead people, the account differs significantly from the narrative of Clinton shared in her memoir.

Contrary to Clinton’s claim, Putin said his mother fainted due to starvation with people laying her to rest near corpses, but she woke up just in time. In his narration of the episode, his father was at the war front and not with his mother. Putin mentioned that his father was “in the battlefield the whole time” and “didn’t get a chance to look for her.”

“My uncle helped her. He would feed her out of his own rations. There was a time when he was transferred somewhere for a while, and she was on the verge of starvation. This is no exaggeration. Once my mother fainted from hunger. People thought she had died, and they laid her out with the corpses. Luckily, Mama woke up in time and started moaning. By some miracle, she lived. She made it through the entire blockade of Leningrad. They didn’t get her out until the danger was past,” Putin wrote. 

Be it a tale or whatever, the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia has put Putin in the black books of many countries, considering what they termed his overbearing to forcefully coerce Ukraine to do his bidding.

Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, reports have it that all the efforts by the comity of nations to restrain Putin through diplomacy, sanctions and verbal threats, failed, just as he was accused of hoodwinking the world with all sorts of narratives, hype and lies.

Since the video went viral, many are still in shock that a personality like Putin, whose parents have had a brutal taste of war, shouldn’t have mooted such idea in the first place, not to talk of initiating such attack.

Though after several interventions, he never showed he would go ahead with his plans, but at last when the Russian heavy hardware rolled into Ukraine, everyone was astounded as he fooled the world by saying that it was ‘a special military operation,’ which later turned-out to be a full-scale invasion of an independent, democratic and sovereign nation.

Public affairs analysts and diplomats have observed that under Putin’s leadership, Russia has shifted to authoritarianism. Citing the jailing and repression of political opponents, the intimidation and suppression of the free press, and the lack of free and fair elections, Russia is no longer considered as a democracy,

Experts claimed that Russia has scored poorly on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, and Freedom House’s Freedom in the World index.

According to a Professor of Social Ethics, Dr. I. John Mohan Razu, in an article, he said Putin has been justifying his action against Ukraine that “there should be no doubt that any potential aggressor will face defeat and ominous consequences should it directly attack our country.”

“Putin candidly signaled to others, ‘Hands Off,’ Russia’s a powerful N-State In the World-War 11 USSR joined the allies to fight against Germany led by a fascist Hitler. Post-World War 11, witnessed Cold War between USA and USSR that particularly re-ordered Europe. History has demonstrated that European war that involves major powers can spiral and thus lead to unimaginable consequences.

“Putin, a totalitarian amassed absolute power and wants to re-design Europe. Accordingly, he thought the best way is to expand by bringing Baltic countries under him and invasion of Ukraine is certainly towards that end. As war in Ukraine prolongs, one can foresee a new world order evolving as in the UNSC, we observe loyalties keep shifting.

“Alignment of countries could take place based on the economic, technological and political interests. Empire builders and expansionists such as President Vladimir Putin and President Xi Jinping of China have clearly asserted their intent how the world order ought to be.”

He claimed Putin will go all out to re-write history. “Ukraine invasion is going to set yet another chapter in the post-World War 11 history where new world order will be unfolding as the nation-states, regions and blocs would further polarise and re-align. Alongside its attack, Putin has asked the Ukrainian forces to overthrow the Ukrainian ruling dispensation by calling them as “neo-fascists’, “drug-addicts” and “terrorists” — inciting for a coup. We live in crossroads as the world is torn into multiple pieces. Empire-builders are now back to consolidate their powers by ways of aligning with those powers with similar intent.”