Shoe Salesman’s Failed Ukrainian Bid

My Grandfather Jack always said never trust a politician, or a shoe salesman. Which explained why he had a bust of Robert ‘Piggy’ Muldoon, New Zealand’s notorious Prime Minister, in his toilet. When I asked Jack why he had ‘Piggy’ in there, he explained “That bastard is pissing on the working man, this way I can imagine giving him a dose of his own medicine”. Little did Jack realise that a few years after the end of Muldoon’s dictatorial reign of terror, a future dictator would be infiltrating his beloved Labour party under the guise of a Bata shoe salesman.

The question remains ‘why would Putin actually invade Ukraine?’ And the answer may not be what we’ve been led to believe.

We’ve all heard the Russian disinformation trolls spouting their doublespeak:

‘The West started it by expanding NATO into Eastern Europe’,

‘Ukraine is a Nazi regime committing genocide’ or 

‘Ukraine isn’t even a real country.’ 

When really, it’s more likely that Putin fell down his own rabbit hole during the covid lockdowns and has emerged as a ‘wanna-be’ modern day Czar, ‘making Russia great again’ – sound familiar? 

The Ukrainian reality is that Putin started this war in February 2014, with his ‘little green men’ annexing Crimea and parts of the Donbas and Lysychansk Oblasts, most likely to prevent Ukraine from joining the EU after his proxy was ousted from power. This reveals an ongoing pattern of Russian partial occupation of countries to prevent them from becoming part of the EU community such as South Ossetia in Georgia in 2008 and Transnistria in Moldova. One of the myriads of EU rules for an applicant country state that the aspiring country must have its borders intact.

Or is it from a historical angle? Past invasions of Russia and the Soviet Union, infamously lead by Napoleon and Hitler, have come across the vast Northern and East European Plains. The plain is so flat, the only militarily defendable geographic features are either the Carpathian Mountains or the great rivers. Is Putin really attempting to secure the ‘invasion’ routes to Russia? If so, then he certainly won’t be satisfied with just Ukraine. With the Carpathian Mountains the next logical boundary, this would explain the extreme nervousness of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria. 

Maybe this is the old ‘Diversionary War’ tactic to shore up Putin’s failing popularity on the home front? With fresh calls for protest from jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny in January 2021, and with Putin’s approval ratings falling in November 2021 due to a Covid surge. Did Putin decide on another war to shore up support, by using the 2021 Spring ‘training’ exercises on Ukraine’s border as an invasion force? A wave of nationalism certainly swept Russia, school children waving ‘Z’ flags and even athletes sporting the ‘Z’ invasion symbol on their chests. But then again, Putin didn’t reckon on the Russian mass exodus after the invasion, with the draft dodging brain drain estimated upwards of 900,000 people flocking to Istanbul, Kazakhstan or anywhere they could grab a ticket out of their increasingly isolated homeland. 

Perhaps it is a cynical asset grab as Ukraine has an estimated three to eleven trillion dollars’ worth of rare earth metals. Is Putin hedging against the transition from an oil-based economy? Or is it something else?

If we go back to his early career as a KGB officer between 1975 and 1991, we get a clue. 

Officially, Putin held a middling position in the backwater of Dresden, just as the Berlin Wall collapsed along with the Soviet empire soon after. However, he did retire from the KGB with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel to St. Petersburg to start a new career in politics.

And there are also anecdotal stories of Putin attending the judicial investigation of the sinking of the Russian cruise liner Mikhail Lermontov in the Marlborough Sounds in 1986. 

Or posing as a camera wielding tourist while President Ronald Reagan was visiting Moscow.

How do we reconcile these conflicting views of an active or ‘middling’ agent retiring with a high rank?

Was Putin’s ascent into politics planned all along? It is highly likely he scoured the KGB records and destroyed any trace of his real espionage activities once he had started his political rise. I suspect this was to appeal to a Western audience that he wasn’t a real ‘bad boy’ so the West could do ‘business’ with him. I recall George ‘dubya’ Bush’s description of Putin “I looked the man in the eye. I found him straight forward and trustworthy…”

Russian history tells us that from the Czar to the Soviets and right up to today, that control of Russia has always been on the back of a strong secret police. The secret power behind the throne from the Czar’s ‘Oprichniki’ morphing into the ‘Third Section’ who infamously produced the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ that conspiracy nuts still reference today. Through to Lenin’s Cheka who killed or imprisoned the aristocracy and intelligentsia in the Soviet purges. The Cheka morphed into the KGB which was replaced by the FSB post-Cold War. These agencies all have one thing in common, keeping someone safely seated on the throne in that sprawling monster state of Russia. 

The fact that these agencies haven’t always succeeded, would help explain that this war is actually a means to clamp down on the rising internal dissent that arose in 2021 and shore up flagging support for Putin.

It would seem that Putin was in the box seat to advance Russia and bring her back into the ranks of the world’s superpowers when he took office, as his world view demands Russian respect after the humiliating collapse of the Soviet Union. But he has squandered that opportunity and followed the predictable Russian leadership path of greed, corruption and diversion.

Whether as a KGB agent, a Bata shoe salesman or President, Putin just isn’t quite up to the task. We can only hope that the coming Ukrainian counter offensive turns into a rout of Russia’s equally corrupt army this year, and forces Putin to abandon his imperial dreams.

Slava Ukraini!

NB: I wrote this in 2023, and after further research now have other ideas to add to this which I'll do in an upcoming post.  DD