Dead Tsar Walking: Putin at 70 Dead Tsar Walking: Putin at 70Thanks for reading JohnSweeneyRoars! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. John Sweeney An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying tsar, Vladimir Putin turns seventy on October 7th but his brutal war against Ukraine is exploding in his puffy, currants-in-dough, steroid-addled face. Cargo 200s – Sov slang for soldier corpses – are piling up; surviving troops are voting with their feet; draftees are running for the border; their mothers and wives are hitting the streets to protest. You might wager a fiver on the master of the Kremlin making it to seventy-one but I wouldn’t bet on it. Like Shelley foreseeing the end of George III, the Kremlin’s grave-diggers are smacking their chops, spades at the ready.
Thank you John, this is a brilliant article and your analysis (and courage) are deeply comforting.
I have been reading Timothy Snyder since before Putin’s psychopathy became unavoidable in February, but more so since. His ongoing series of Yale lectures on the history of KyvanRus and modern Ukraine, vis-a-vis Rossiya are more than worthy of your attention (see Snyder Yale Ukraine on YouTube).
Free class at Yale for 20 lectures, by a man deep in knowledge of European history and essential reading, now, for mine.
I will get your book. You are the only other writer/commentator I gave struck so far that seems to have a grasp on the history of Ukraine, and why Putin is indulging his dying carcass in such madness.
I am the 74-year old son of an RN CPO Sigs, HMS Furious, HMS Illustrious 1936-47 and RNZN 1949-53 (Korea).
My mother was a WRN Writer in Western Approaches Command, Liverpool WW2, my maternal grandmother a shell factory supervisor in WW1.
I’m a statistical survivor of both wars, as a descendant, my paternal grandfather (UK) was with the British at Gallipoli and fought his way to Baghdad by 1919; an air raid warden in WW2.
I know what wars do to human families, as I lived with these survivors. I hate tyrants like Putin who keep on mincing whole populations through the workings if their homicidal ambitions.
I have worked with psychopathic bosses and managers over my many lives and when I smell one - like Putin - I know there is only one way to deal with them. The way the Ukrainian armed forces and the people of Ukraine are now doing.
Look the bastards in the eye, do you
fiercest haka ( a la All Blacks ) and get ready to fight.
Keep doing what you’re doing, writing as a truth-teller, and those who want the truth will find you.
Kia kaha, kia ū, kia manawanui -
be strong and fight with all your heart.
Thank you
Jeffrey
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
Key work: The Lost Pilot, Penguin, NZ (2013). Memoir, WW2, kamikaze.
Thank you John, this is a brilliant article and your analysis (and courage) are deeply comforting.
I have been reading Timothy Snyder since before Putin’s psychopathy became unavoidable in February, but more so since. His ongoing series of Yale lectures on the history of KyvanRus and modern Ukraine, vis-a-vis Rossiya are more than worthy of your attention (see Snyder Yale Ukraine on YouTube).
Free class at Yale for 20 lectures, by a man deep in knowledge of European history and essential reading, now, for mine.
I will get your book. You are the only other writer/commentator I gave struck so far that seems to have a grasp on the history of Ukraine, and why Putin is indulging his dying carcass in such madness.
I am the 74-year old son of an RN CPO Sigs, HMS Furious, HMS Illustrious 1936-47 and RNZN 1949-53 (Korea).
My mother was a WRN Writer in Western Approaches Command, Liverpool WW2, my maternal grandmother a shell factory supervisor in WW1.
I’m a statistical survivor of both wars, as a descendant, my paternal grandfather (UK) was with the British at Gallipoli and fought his way to Baghdad by 1919; an air raid warden in WW2.
I know what wars do to human families, as I lived with these survivors. I hate tyrants like Putin who keep on mincing whole populations through the workings if their homicidal ambitions.
I have worked with psychopathic bosses and managers over my many lives and when I smell one - like Putin - I know there is only one way to deal with them. The way the Ukrainian armed forces and the people of Ukraine are now doing.
Look the bastards in the eye, do you
fiercest haka ( a la All Blacks ) and get ready to fight.
Keep doing what you’re doing, writing as a truth-teller, and those who want the truth will find you.
Kia kaha, kia ū, kia manawanui -
be strong and fight with all your heart.
Thank you
Jeffrey
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
Key work: The Lost Pilot, Penguin, NZ (2013). Memoir, WW2, kamikaze.