I think that in the West, including the Baltics and Ukraine, the personality cult of Putin is widespread.
Putin is overemphasized, Putin is written about all the time, Putin is talked about during and after meals. All unpleasant things are attributed to Putin and his wickedness.
So the people of the West are Putin-believers, but since Putin is an evil demon in their opinion, this Putin-religion must be treated as a form of Satanism.
But in reality, Russia is ruled by an elite, and if Putin went against the opinion of this elite, he would eventually be removed.
The war in Ukraine was decided long ago by this elite.
It was the consensus of the clique ruling Russia that if NATO continues to expand, look here is the red line, and if NATO crosses it, there will be war.
Part of the Russian elite wanted this war already in 2014. But politicians like Putin and Lavrov still tried to keep in mind how this would look from the outside and whether it could be formalized to appear in line with international law.
So this war would have come even if there was someone else instead of Putin because NATO pressed on, and Ukraine was preparing for war in Donbas and Crimea. But Russian strategists and generals did not want NATO there.
This war has nothing much to do with Putin’s character and illnesses. Russia has entire institutes for foreign policy, strategy and military.
It’s about the system and the regime, not its leader, Putin. But, of course, this system has been shaped by its leader Putin for many years.
But on the other hand, Yeltsin, to whom Estonia erected a statue, put Putin in power. And Yeltsin set up Putin because NATO cheated him and Russia. NATO began to expand. And Putin was already seen as having the potential to counter it.
If you are told every day about Putin and Putinism, seeing Putin as the evil cause of war, you are indoctrinated into Putin’s cult of personality.
And the function of the personality cult of Putin is to exclude the concept of a “rational Putin”.
You have to believe, completely irrationally, that Putin is completely irrational.
You must not for a moment consider the possibility that some of the Western moves may have been irrational themselves, and Putin’s responses to those Western moves were more or less rational.
You must not know that some of the West’s own experts predicted such a Russian reaction to NATO expansion even before Putin was in power.
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