Vlad Putin turned 72 yesterday, and yet again I failed to wish him many happy returns. Very forgetful on my part, a sign of old age no doubt.
Neither did I remember to give Vlad a present, but then what do you give a man who has everything? Palaces, yachts, tens of billions stashed away offshore – Vlad’s possessions would defeat any sycophant racking his brain for a gift that might please Bunker Boy.
In any case, even if Vlad were still a yacht or a palace short, I couldn’t afford to give him such a present. Nor, truth to tell, would I want to. Yet even his closest associates, all billionaires in their own right, must find it hard to touch the right chord in their chieftain’s heart.
But then who says a birthday present has to be a valuable material possession? Poets, for example, have been known to write immortal sonnets for their beloved, and surely this is a better idea than an M&S gift card or even a piece of jewellery. Those of us who believe in the primacy of the spirit know that while material joy is transient heavenly joy is transcendent.
Putin’s cronies know it too, which is why they like to commemorate Vlad’s birthday by tugging on his heart’s strings. Thus, on the day Vlad turned 54 in 2006, they murdered Anna Politkovskaya, his bitter critic.
To be fair, they probably didn’t stumble on that gift idea all by themselves. Vlad might have dropped a hint to that effect, possibly paraphrasing Henry II by saying: “Who will rid me of this meddlesome journalist?”
For Anna Politkovskaya was indeed a journalist, and she was as meddlesome as they got. Hardly a day went by without Vlad having to wince as he read her reports on the second Chechen War, where the Russians were rehearsing the population-control concepts they are currently putting to such profitable use in the Ukraine.
Politkovskaya constantly shuttled between Moscow and Chechnya, visiting refugee camps filled with indescribable misery that she nevertheless managed to describe most poignantly.
I visited one such camp in 1995 BP (Before Putin) and the harrowing experience will stay with me for ever. But unlike me, Politkovskaya had the ear of a vast Russian audience, and she was writing her accounts at a time Vlad was firmly ensconced in the Kremlin.
Moreover, it was precisely the Second Chechen War, started in 1999, that put Vlad in the seat formerly occupied by Stalin. Since Russia still had a semblance of public opinion in those days, the public had to be sold on the idea of an obscure KGB officer as the leader.
To that end, his KGB colleagues blew up several Russian buildings together with all their inhabitants, blamed that outrage on the Chechens and used it as the pretext for another war. The gullible public was thus made aware of the pressing need for a strong leader, and who can be stronger than an officer in the outfit that had murdered some 60 million Soviet citizens?
Criticising the Chechen War was thus tantamount to criticising Vlad himself. And not merely criticising – it was bringing into doubt his very legitimacy. No wonder Vlad had to pop antacids and analgesics every time Politkovskaya put her poison pen to paper.
Granted, she was beaten to the full account of those building explosions by Litvinenko and Feltshinsky who published the book Blowing Up Russia in 2002. But since those reprobates lived outside Russia at the time, it was harder to get to them.
(Harder but not impossible. In fact, Vlad’s people managed to murder Litvinenko in London, just a month after Politkovskaya. Call it a belated birthday present.)
But even though Politkovskaya lived in Moscow, she still had the gall to publish her 2004 book Putin’s Russia, in which she dissed Vlad all the way to higher doses of aspirin and antacids. So, to repeat my earlier question, what do you give a man who has everything? The answer is, Politkovskaya’s head on a platter.
That’s just a figure of speech. The intrepid journalist wasn’t beheaded. She was shot dead in the lift of her block of flats. But the timing was perfect: 7 October. Vlad must have managed to contort his features into a grin-like grimace.
Now, it would be unfair to suggest that Vlad only has friends in Russia. In fact, his brand of strong leadership fascinates many admirers in such places as North Korea, China, Iran and The Mail on Sunday. Some of such sentiments are genuine, others spring from convenience, but they are all fervent.
And let’s be honest: Vlad is a real friend in need. Whenever a rogue country or a terrorist group needs support, moral or material, Vlad is there to help out. His arsenal and chequebook are always open for organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah and, say what you will about Muslims, but ingrates they aren’t.
Vlad rubs their back, they’ll rub out his enemies – and none are more mortal than the West, including Israel. So would it be preposterous to suggest that Hamas’s sadistic foray on 7 October, 2023, was also a birthday present for Vlad?
It has certainly proved even more precious than the murder of Politkovskaya. That act had a purely aesthetic value, but no strategic kind. Hamas, on the other hand, provided an invaluable diversion by kicking off a war to distract the West’s attention from the Ukraine.
Now you understand my predicament. Much as I’d love to give Vlad a birthday present, I can’t really murder anyone. And nothing less seems to do.