CONTEXT: I first put this piece online in late October 2022, prompted by dark Kremlin hints then of using nuclear weapons pre-emptively before Ukrainian ‘terrorists’ did so first. Now threats of escalation are coming from that quarter again, on the pretext that Russia – waxing indignant that what it routinely does to the neighbor it invaded might now be done to it – is being attacked by (alleged) Ukrainian drones. So far, this has been on a minuscule scale, compared to the Russian V2-like weapons unleashed on non-military targets in Kyiv, etc.

The sacrifice of many thousands of Russian troops so far in Putin’s Special Military Operation (which he assumed would be easy – as Hitler did, of his invasion of the USSR) should prove that he sees his own people as mere tools, expendable for greater goals. Like the goal of appeasing his own gross pride at the loss of lands and peoples from Russian control at the fall of the USSR. So it wouldn’t be a surprise if he was behind bombings in 1999 which killed mere dozens. Nor would it be implausible if the current drone strikes are actually engineered by his regime now, as an excuse to unleash more and greater violence on its innocent neighbor-victim.

However: a wise friend suggested that instead of focusing my fury on Putin (as I have elsewhere), I take the broader perspective of Prince Andrei in ‘War and Peace’: That is, we suppose Great Men, like Napoleon, ‘lead’ history, but in fact they really follow it, by embodying the spirit of their times. A fair observation; Putin is likely merely the point of a spear of pre-modern Russian culture, which continues to allow him and kindred scoundrels to slash their way to the top of society. A culture that assumes brute force and brutish self-interest will always prevail in the human world.

But Ukraine is frustrating that assumption. Its valor, combined with the efficiency of NATO military hardware, organizational advice, intelligence – that is, every advantage of societies whose people are free to reach and harness their full potential, not be mindless slaves of the ruthless and powerful – are helping to show that Dark Age attitudes like those of Russia’s past and present rulers are not apt to ‘prevail’ in modernity (again, as Hitler also learned).

A hidebound cynic like Putin can neither accept nor grasp that, so the Free World needs to keep demonstrating it till this Mongol-inspired Muscovy mindset is conclusively bested by humane, righteous rationality. If not stopped, Putin and the whole awful ‘spirit’ he currently personifies, may inflict, on their own Motherland, the very destruction they insist the West is trying to achieve. That is, cause the dissolution of the Russian nation. And that, given how many times Russians have shown such great gifts as a people – when allowed to – would be a tragedy not just for them, but for the world.

A chilling reminder of some grim history, possibly relevant again: Vladimir Putin eventually achieved absolute power in Russia, arising directly from the terror bombing of several apartment buildings in Moscow (shown in the picture above, with a separate, explanatory article) and other Russian cities in 1999. Those crimes were cast as the work of Chechen terrorists, during a combat lull between Russia and its rebellious breakaway Muslim province, Chechnya.

But this ghastly episode may echo today, in 2022, in Russian hints that Ukrainians are planning nuclear terrorism.

Putin, having back then been recently named successor to the tragicomic Russian President and buffoon-in-chief Boris Yeltsin, used those bombings – which collapsed mid-rise civilian residential buildings at night, killing scores of sleeping innocents – as a pretext to restart the war against Chechnya. That led to an orgy of atrocities on both sides, with a bloody, poisoned ‘peace’ eventually won by Moscow.

But it has long been suspected – almost assumed – that those bombings were carried out by the secret police with Putin’s permission, if not his outright instigation, intending to blame the Chechens. That would serve as a motive to reignite the war against them, while also showing Russians they needed a strong leader like him to protect them. And given how he then pulverized the slumbering Chechen insurgency, it seems the worldview of those who gain power in Russia cannot tolerate not crushing any foe to dust.

(And there goes that Russian rulers’ ‘tick’ again, of being just fine with sacrificing the lives of their common people – ‘little cogs,’ as Stalin called them – for a supposedly greater good; like their gaining, or staying in power.)

I don’t speak Russian, but almost wonder if the language even has a word for ‘credibility,’ the idea that one’s past actions entitle one to be believed or trusted – or not – or if that idea even exists in a Russian context. Because the official story of Chechen culpability for the 1999 bombings may be just one of a long, sordid history of barely plausible lies told by rulers at the Center of Russian power, the Kremlin. For example, in 1946, they asserted that, after the Red Army drove the Nazis out of Eastern European nations the Germans had overrun, those nations pleaded for the Soviets to stay – ‘to defend us from Capitalism.’ They were supposedly happy to go from German to Russian slavery; that’s about probable as it sounds.

Either the Kremlinites are so contemptuous of common folk (and not just in Russia) that they assume such drudges will believe whatever Authority tells them, no matter how transparently unlikely it seems – like Chechens supposedly believing wholesale massacre of innocent civilians might help win their freedom – or so cynical they don’t care whether their fabrications are convincing or not.

(The Nazis contrived a ‘false flag’ operation as a rationale for invading Poland in 1939, ‘Operation Canned Goods.’ They took some habitual criminals from German prisons, dressed them in Polish army uniforms, shot them, then left their bodies near a border radio transmitter as ‘proof’ of a Polish incursion into Germany – justifying the huge, long-planned Nazi attack on Poland a few hours later. Hitler had told his generals ‘I will provide a pretext for war; never mind if it is plausible or not.’ And so very possibly Putin too, with the Moscow bombings, then Chechen bloodbath; Vultures of a feather flock together, it seems.)

I raise this ancient history now because of the ominous news that the Russians – who are the ones acting like rampaging, school/mall/hospital/infrastructure-targeting Nazis, not the phantom Fascists whom Putin tells his credulous base he is attacking their peaceful neighbor to destroy – say Ukraine is preparing a dirty nuclear bomb to spew radioactivity on Russian troops; or to sabotage a vast nuclear plant on occupied Ukrainian land. So now if such things happen, he’ll blame them on Kyiv as an excuse for committing worse war crimes than he has already.

Putin appears to have drifted into a surreal state of detachment from reality, a delusional brew of irresponsible indifference to potential calamity. Apparently, in his megalomania, nothing matters more than that his criminally conceived, ill-planned, and ludicrously executed aggression should not fail miserably. And he may stop at nothing to avoid that humiliating outcome. Or at least make the world pay for his frustration.

This is the sort of outlook and behavior alluded to in my March, 2022 FB post, ‘A Sustaining Folly,’ which was partly about how I feel the Russian people deserve far better rulers than they have historically gotten. But it takes epic personal courage to defy vicious, officially-empowered criminals like Putin and his ilk, prone to over-react to any resistance like the savages they are.

As to the echo of the ’99 residential bombings in terms of use of nuclear arms, rarely in my life have I hoped more fervently to be wrong. But if Putin suddenly asserts that ‘The Ukrainians plan to commit Nuclear Terrorism,’ – so Moscow can respond in kind, or worse – please recall those bombed Muscovites, slaughtered in their sleep.

You heard it here first: Putin may replay a trick that worked for him before, assuming no one remembers or cares. But some of us do, and indeed, must.

To conclude, this situation reminds me of an observation I’ve long held about the difference between human intelligence and actual wisdom: A species with the wisdom to wield nuclear weapons would have had the wisdom never to have created them. So God help All of us, that such power – and I don’t just mean atomic weapons – has found its way into the hands of a man like Putin.