ICHEOKU sometimes wants to celebrate President Vladimir Putin for being a thorn in the flesh of Western countries. Other times, ICHEOKU wants to say that what goes around comes around as the West finally got what it deserves in a Vladimir Putin gone ballistically anti West. The West thought that once they allowed Putin to keep his Russian people captive and held hostage to his caprices, that his behavior towards the West would be manageably cordial.
Boy, was the West wrong as President Vladimir Putin turned out to be the cold wounded and hungry poisonous snake which an old woman took home to nurture back to health, which later turned around to bite her, leading to her death from venom poisoning. Instead of reciprocating the "love" which the West showed to him by tolerating him in power for as long as they did, over twenty years in office, he morphed into the West's worst nightmare, a Frankenstein monster of some sort.
President Vladimir Putin has a deeply entrenched hatred and animosity against the West and he is venting this out through the vicious war he is waging against Ukraine, destroying Ukraine, one city at a time. In his mind, he is fighting the West by making an example out of their beloved Ukraine and daring the West to do something about it, the embedded atrocities being parceled out by Russian troops in Ukraine. He is thus goading the West to engage in a fight with Russia. He is ready, willing and able to fight the West and wants to fight the West so badly, only that the West is being circuitous and unwilling to fight Russia, no matter how Putin tries to bait them into a fight.
The United States of America and Europe, for several decades, cuddled President Vladimir Putin. They wined and dined him; did billions of dollars worth of business transactions with Russia; tolerated his excesses, massive abuse and violations of human rights of Russians. They looked the other way while Vladimir Putin smothered democracy in Russia, killed the opposition and imprisoned many of his critics and literally turned Russia into a one man's fiefdom. Yet he was celebrated by the West and allowed to operate freely within international circles as a recognized preeminent world leader.
It was convenient for the West to let Vladimir Putin be as they did not want him rocking anyone's boat in the West. They assessed that tolerating Vladimir Putin was the surest bet to achieving peace in Europe as that will help keep war out of the European continent. The thought that Africa, the Middle East and some parts of South Asia are the only places where wars should be fought, people killed, maimed and displaced. That those regions of the world are more suitable for wars and they can sell them as many weapons as they want, provided they remain restive, depopulating themselves and destroying their countries. Anything that will keep war out of Europe is good for them.
They conveniently forgot that Vladimir Putin is a ruthless dictator possibly because his skin color is white and not black or somewhat yellow or tinged by a hue. They refused to brand him a monster who has repressed democracy, imprisoned and killed his opponents, poisoned critics and suppressed freedoms of all kinds, including freedom of the press, in Russia. The West continued to deal with him despite provable acts of egregious violations of things considered sacred to a civilized behavior, leading many to ask, how exactly is Vladimir Putin different from Saddam Hussein, Moummar Gaddafi, Robert Mugabe or even Kim Jong Un?
These are despots whom the West branded evil and hunted throughout their reign of terror. Except for North Korea's Kim Jung Un, the other three are now deep-six and the West is still gunning for and can't wait to see Kim Jong Un gone as well. If all these former leaders of their respective countries did all the things which the West accused them of doing, and Vladimir Putin also did and is still doing the same things plus more, why then is the Russian strong man still breathing? Why has he not been hunted down, removed from power, summarily tried and executed like the rest of other dictators.
Why was Saddam Hussein's noose not good enough for Vladimir Putin's neck? Why was hunting down Moummar Gaddafi and killing him like a common thief not a good measure for Vladimir Putin? Why was sanctioning Zimbabweans to starvation and abject deprivation, in an attempt to discredit and remove Robert Mugabe from power, not also a good strategic pressure to be similarly put on Russians? It only reaffirms the thinking in some quarters that the West's pretentious righteous indignation is usually selectively applied and according to who they determined has fallen out of line and out of their "do what we tell you" orbit. It is a control joystick and they use it as they pleases, not as merited or warranted, simply subjective.
It is either the West is afraid of Russia and scared of invoking the ire of Vladimir Putin, or they do not want to pick on a fellow white man or show him in a light not so favorable for the image which they usually portray of themselves. Can anyone please tell ICHEOKU what Saddam Hussein was accused of doing which Vladimir Putin has not done ten times over and is still doing? Can somebody in the West please explain to ICHEOKU how Vladimir Putin is different from Moummar Gaddafi or Robert Mugabe. But as with everything the West does, it is always tailored to suit their particular narrative at a particular time, and they protect their own while vilifying others who do not conform to their dictates.
The Russian strongman has fallen out of favor of the West because he fell out of line and is no longer controllable, so the West decided to use the proxy war in Ukraine to humble and humiliate him. They want to diminish him and show the Russian army as not worth its hype. But how the crisis in Ukraine between the West and Vladimir Putin eventually resolves remains to be seen, as there is no current reasonable roadmap anywhere in sight. For 22 years the West cuddled Putin and now they are crying foul because their Frankenstein monster has become uncontrollable. The West knew, but chose to pretend that the longer a person stays in power the more the person becomes conflicted, power drunk and with the feeling of invincibility, begins to do terrible things.
This is the case which the West is belatedly now making against Putin. Why did they not make the case much earlier when it could have easily resolved Putin's question. Why did the West not know that one man remaining in power for 22 years is a recipe for a disaster. Why were they forcing other countries to democratize and other leaders to conduct elections and discouraging sit tight leaderships in other places, but allowed Vladimir Putin to remain in power for as long as he has been in office since 1999? President Vladimir Putin's metastasizing problem would have since been proactively nipped in the bud had the West done the same needful with Russia as they frequently do in some other countries; and discouraged a sit-tight leader from clinging onto power in Russia for far too long. It is sad they did but hopefully, President Vladimir Putin's era in Russia will end with the Ukraine war, one way or the other.
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Christy 'Apena' Essien-Igbokwe , the wife of Jegede Shokoya of the New Masquerade and Nigeria's lady of songs is dead; she was 51years old. Although her family claimed that "brief Illness" killed her like so many Nigerians; Icheoku retorts that it was most likely AKwa Ibom voodoo and remote control that was used to arrest her. It is on record that she had fallen out with the governor of her native Akwa Ibiom State and have been having a relentless war for political turf with the governor? So who knows whether she was sacrificed to Ekpe cult or even Alusi-Okija as an offal; afterall African science is still very much alive and portent. May her soul rest in peace.
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