If he were not a serial killer, Putin would be pitiful. Like the dictator at the end of The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez, he is alone in his palace, perplexed, paranoid, and afraid of his people. And of the external enemy. David beats the clumsy Goliath, not with stones but with drones.
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Who would have imagined it in February 2022, when Russia launched its large-scale invasion and everyone assumed, starting with Putin himself, that Ukraine would fall in days? And not that, instead of consolidating his internal power, Tsar Vladimir would end up seeing, in the fifth year of his imperial war, how control slips from his hands.
A little over a year ago, Trump mocked the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, at the White House. That he had no cards left, he told him. That his friend Putin had them all. Not anymore, Donald.
Between dead and wounded, for six months Russia has been losing more than a thousand soldiers a day, five times more than the Ukrainians, according to the president of Finland, Alexander Stubb. This matters little to the butcher of the Kremlin, but other things do. While the Russian economy sinks, Ukrainian drones not only operate with lethal efficiency on the front but also destroy oil facilities far from it. This week they damaged a luxury building in the center of Moscow.
That is why, because of what Kremlin spokespeople call “the terrorist threat,” yesterday the tank and missile parade that has been the most imposing part of the scenery held every year in Moscow since the end of “the Great Patriotic War” in 1945 was canceled. The idiotic war in Ukraine, which has already lasted longer than Russia’s participation in World War II, has been one of the great mistakes in military history; the defense mounted by Ukraine, one of the great feats.
Ukraine is today the military superpower of democratic Europe. It has the most numerous and capable armed forces on the continent and possesses the most innovative military industry, adapted like no other in the world to the technological revolution that has redefined in these four years the concept of what war is. Ukraine produced four million drones last year; this year it aims for seven million.
Ukraine is Europe’s military superpower; Zelensky offers defensive aid to Arabia and makes a pact with Germany
Zelensky traveled last month to Saudi Arabia and two more Gulf countries to offer them military aid. The Muslim sheikhs understand that no matter how much they flatter Trump, no matter how many gifts they give him and how many shady deals they make with his relatives, the orange king cannot protect them from Iranian drones like the Jewish leader of Ukraine can.
At the same time, Zelensky has just signed a military cooperation contract with Germany. The German government is going to invest one hundred billion euros in defense. To know how to spend it better, there is no country that offers more knowledge than Ukraine.
As President Stubb says, we have to realize that Europe needs Ukraine more than Ukraine needs Europe. That it should be admitted to the European Union now. And if Europe is left alone, with Canada, in NATO, all the more reason. So that in Spain, for example, we do not have to divert funds used to finance pensions and our excellent public health system to national defense, what better than to depend on the Ukrainian shield? It would not be a bad deal. Ukrainians give their blood, their tears, and their military inventions so that we can continue enjoying the good life under the sun.
Vice President Vance told Zelensky at that meeting at the White House last year that he should show gratitude towards the U.S. What nonsense. But it is time for the rest of Europe to thank Ukraine, without excluding those silly radicals on the left who persist in the notion that Russia is still (if it ever was) the proletariat’s utopia, or the bulwark against imperialism, or some other such idiocy.
People are slowly starting to lose their fear of Putin, to speak out against him
Go today to Russia, the most literally fascist country on Earth with the possible exception of North Korea, and see the restrictions Putin is imposing on internet use, which, combined with rising prices and the collapse of the non-military economy, is generating more popular discontent with the Russian leader than at any time in his 26 years in power. He is experiencing the worst thing that can happen to a dictator: people are slowly starting to lose their fear, to speak out against him. Just look at social media, precisely the reason Putin is trying to cut access to them.
There are signs, beyond the forced castration of the “Victory” parade, that he is starting to get scared. Let us not forget that his worst nightmare is to suffer the same fate as Gaddafi in Libya, lynched by his own people. This week the Financial Times cited European intelligence sources saying that Putin has strengthened measures for his personal protection. He spends less time than ever in his private residences, more and more in underground bunkers. People working in his closest circle, including cooks and bodyguards, are forbidden to use mobile phones and state surveillance systems are installed in their own homes.
So that you don’t have to, dear readers, I have been following almost obsessively for many years Western experts on Russia, or Russian experts who have fled to the West, in newspapers, podcasts, and television. Those I choose to take seriously had previously refused to fall into the temptation of thinking that Putin might be in danger of losing power. They remain cautious. They do not predict that Putin will fall in the coming days, or even months. But suddenly they dare to whisper the phrase “coup d’état,” a possibility less far-fetched, apparently, than before.
For now, I choose to doubt there will be a happy ending, for the same reason I never believe before a football match that my team will win. Pessimism reduces the possible degree of disappointment. But what everything does indicate is that, both in his war in Ukraine and regarding the absolute control he seeks to exert over the sad Russian people, the tyrant has never been more on the ropes.
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