Tony Brenton’s article The Putin I Know Isn’t Going to Take on Nato can only be properly understood with the benefit of the Russian proverb ‘No one lies like an eyewitness’.
In his former capacity of British ambassador, Mr Brenton met Putin a few times. Those encounters supposedly gave this typical public self-servant some deep insights into the current situation in the Ukraine.
These he generously shares with us in his article, where, to repeat what Mary McCarthy said about Lillian Hellman, every word is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘but’.
First Mr Brenton vents his boundless admiration for Putin’s ascent from being a street hooligan to “…admission to the Soviet Union’s elite organisation, the KGB. It was a bit like making it from Borstal to the Guards.”
Not a bit like that, actually. It was more like being admitted to a larger and more powerful version of an SS Einzatsgruppe.
The Guards, as far as I know, didn’t murder millions of their own people, which is precisely what the KGB did – and was doing, albeit at a slower pace, at the time Putin joined it.
Neither do I know many Englishmen who would refuse to shake the hand of a Guards officer, while I knew many Russians (actually was one myself) who wouldn’t extend the same courtesy to anyone even tangentially associated with the KGB, never mind a career officer.
Mr Brenton first met Putin in St Petersburg, where the colonel was known “as a young official with a reputation for getting things done.” This is factually true, but what makes it utterly mendacious is that there is no mention of exactly what kind of things Putin got done.
To correct this omission, let’s just say that he was known for corruption whose scale was remarkable even by Russian standards.
Just take a look at the dossier published by Marina Salye, who in 1992 headed the Petersburg Council commission investigating Putin’s business machinations when he was still a lowly deputy mayor.
Among other choice bits, the documents shows that Putin signed deals to export $100 million worth of raw materials in exchange for food. The raw materials dutifully left Russia. No food came back in return – this at a time of rationing in Petersburg.
The dossier states that Putin’s “quest for personal enrichment and absence of any moral barriers became obvious at the very onset of his career.” But he did get things done, which is all that matters to his sycophant.
“Putin as president continues to display those same qualities which got him to the top,” continues Brenton, not realising that he is damning his idol with faint praise.
Which qualities would they be? Hooliganism? Sadism? Corruption? Exhibitionism? Pride in his criminal alma mater?
No, what impresses Mr Brenton is Putin’s “loyalty”, his being “impeccably turned out”, his “exuding aggressive fitness” and his “impressive command of the facts of whatever he is discussing.”
He then cites with approval Putin’s dismay at the West’s wishy-washy anti-terrorist policies. “We kill them,” Brenton reports Putin as saying to Western visitors.
Quite. Except that under Putin’s much vaunted guidance the terrorists are routinely killed with the hostages they hold.
Thus, for example, in 2004 Putin personally ordered a brutal and incompetent attack on a school taken over by Chechen separatists. Putin’s thugs used tanks, incendiary rockets and other heavy weapons to kill 385 hostages, half of them children. Most of the key terrorists got away.
Two tears earlier, terrorists took over a Moscow theatre, and that time they didn’t get away (“We kill them.”). Putin’s special forces resolved the hostage crisis by pumping some unidentified poison gas into the theatre, killing all 40 attackers – along with about 130 hostages.
I dare say this modus operandi is more evocative of Borstal than of the Guards, but then I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Col. Putin personally.
Having established Putin’s CV credentials, Mr Brenton then elucidates the current situation in the Ukraine and how it may develop.
“Putin,” he explains, “nailed his flag to the mast of protecting the East Ukrainian dissidents.” That’s a nice word to use in this context. I’ve heard ‘separatists’, ‘rebels’ and ‘insurgents’, but ‘dissidents’ is new to me.
So those chaps who fire rockets at public transport and AA missiles at airliners are dissidents, a bit like Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, Sakharov and all those small fry Putin used to harass and arrest early in his career.
Perhaps Putin is driven by repentance: he used to torture one lot of dissidents, now he wishes to protect another. A perfectly Christian impulse, that, and we all know how pious Putin has recently become.
One problem though: there were no Eastern Ukrainian dissidents in need of protection until a year ago.
You know, until the time Putin put together gangs of murderous thugs from all over the ‘former’ Soviet Union, armed them to the teeth with modern weapons, fortified them with Russian regular troops and turned them loose on the Ukraine.
Thus the mast to which Putin nailed his flag is that of brutal aggression bringing not just the Ukraine but all of Europe to the brink of a major war.
Oh sorry, that’s not the case at all. We mustn’t get our knickers in a twist or, as Brenton puts it, “There is simply no evidence for the Western hysteria about a revanchist Russia.”
Actually, one doesn’t detect hysteria as much as fearful and amply justified concern. Especially when one recalls Putin’s spokesmen threatening to turn America “into nuclear dust” or the Colonel himself citing the number of days it would take his tanks to get to Kiev and Vilnius (not yet the Channel, thank God) or him again, describing the breakup of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”. (Greater than the two world wars, in other words.)
Overlaying those on Putin’s warmongering in the Ukraine does make what Brenton calls ‘hysteria’ and I call ‘fearful concern’ amply justified. But then he has touched the sainted man’s vestments, so he knows what’s what.
I don’t know if Brenton is paid by Putin to utter this ignorant and mendacious gibberish. Possibly not. But one struggles to see how differently he would cover the situation if he were indeed on Putin’s payroll.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that this piece of… journalism has appeared in The Daily Telegraph, our flagship conservative broadsheet.