Op-Ed: Putin the puncher
photo: Sergei Demyanov
Georgia condemns and NATO frowns, saying he shouldn’t have come to Abkhazia without Tbilisi’s permission. The reaction is quite predictable, like the August weather in Abkhazia, and it’s as far from reality as the glaciers in the Antarctic.
There is a version that the Westerners and part of the Russophiles agree with: Russian President, Vladimir Putin, travelled to Pitsunda so as not to come off as a loser after the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s recent visit to Georgia. And I find this version a little bit touching by the degree of its naivety.
Putin could have reacted a lot more childishly to the actions by some American, even very high-ranking officials, in his first, or at least, second presidential term.
But not now, when the demarcation line between the West and Russia has acquired a stable shape, while Putin himself has got accustomed over17 years to the role of the nation’s leader, and has even got slightly tired of that excessive fuss. Now, not even Mike Pence can excite excessive emotions or even distract from the usual routine of presidential life.
Eight August is a sacred date for Vladimir Putin. Because 9 years ago on this very day he didn’t ‘play’ box, habitually evading the offensive blows of the ever-smiling opponent. On the contrary, he himself suddenly decided to change the style in the midst of the fight and become a puncher. That is, to become a boxer who counts solely on the power of his knock-down blow, rather than on his hands’ and feet’s speed or techniques, during the duel.
I think, he himself enjoys the puncher’s role. Otherwise, 8 August wouldn’t have been put among special dates in his rather tight schedule, planned long in advance.
All his visits to South Ossetia and Abkhazia are, as a rule, related to 8 August. After all, you can do a Google search and trace the chronology of Vladimir Putin’s movement. Then you will realize that Mike Pence has nothing to do with all that.
I’m absolutely sure that he will habitually mark the 10th anniversary of the launch of the five-day war in South Ossetia in the Caucasus, in Tskhinval. Even if before that, the U.S. President, Donald Trump, would have first announced his trip to Georgia, and later would cancel his visit under the following pretext: ‘I don’t want to intensify the already uneasy US-Russia relations.’
And that’s exactly because he became a puncher on 8 August. A boxer of that style can certainly go to a ballet performance one evening. But nobody would ever think that he went to the opera house because he loves ballet.
So is Putin. He could be seen in the Bolshoy Theatre, but in any other evening and without any reference to the fact that he is supposedly well-versed in all the subtleties of this art.
And that evening of 8 August, the day when the macho man with a heavy blow was born within him 9 years ago, he devoted his time exclusively to the fighters’ tournament.
In other words, after visiting Abkhazia, which, one way or another, caused a change in Putin’s style of behavior, he couldn’t have gone either to the cinema or theater, or even fishing which he had taken a liking to. He went exactly to the fighters’ tournament, where real blood is saturated with profuse perspiration, while the sounds of cracking bones excite more than any leggy beauty.
To put it short, Russian President Vladimir Putin spent that day exactly as he initially imagined, like a real puncher, who ignores others’ blows, and who counts solely on his own ones.
Some people like Putin very much, while others are extremely irritated by his behavior. And that’s because he is a puncher.
video by Sergei Demyanov
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