Vladimir Putin, the aggressor

By: Pedro Corzo - 10/03/2025

Guest columnist.
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The repudiation that many of us feel towards those who defend conciliatory policies or those related to Marxism sometimes leads us to mistakenly consider that certain public figures, such as the Tsar of Russia, are representative of our points of view.

First of all, Vladimir Putin is the most solid guarantor of the dictatorships in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, although they also rely on China, Iran and North Korea, which confirms that the natural allies of the Russian ruler are the most interventionist tyrannies of today, ruthlessly autocratic.

In case selective memory seduces us, we must bear in mind that Putin is the one who sends armed ships to Cuba as a sign of support for totalitarianism and is the same person who brings young Cubans to Russia to serve as mercenaries in its aggression against Ukraine.

Another detail to keep in mind is what the designated dictator of Cuba says about the Russian ruler, reflected in an agency cable: “Miguel Díaz-Canel highlighted this Friday that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, demonstrated in their recent meeting in Moscow an 'enormous sensitivity and commitment' to continue supporting the island in the energy and food sectors. Díaz-Canel assured in the space that he presents for television and social networks, Desde la Presidencia, that Putin showed 'a knowledge of the Cuban reality', of its 'challenges and challenges'. He added that currently Cuba and Russia have more than six business projects in progress, while there are four new ones that they are going to begin to develop and another five in the process of evaluation to be approved.”

The writer Jose Antonio Albertini used to say when we were young and we were immersed in the conspiracy against the dictatorship about an individual he believed could not be trusted: “that guy is not fine cinnamon”. And Putin, I say, is not fine cinnamon of any kind.

The Russian tsar has been the most important figure in his country since 2000 and, when he was not president, he served as prime minister under his loyalist Dmitry Medvedev.

There are victims of Castro-Chavism who claim that Putin is right-wing and against communism, which may be true. However, I am convinced that, although he is opposed to multiculturalism and woke culture, he is not a politician with democratic commitments and respectful of the opinions of others. Putin is a carbon copy of Stalin and Khrushchev.

Putin has been fortunate that many of his rivals, real or potential, have disappeared from the scene very opportunely. Let us recall the most recent, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in prison and the head of the Wagner paramilitary militia, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died with five other people in a suspicious plane crash in August 2023, a few days after leading an uprising against the Kremlin.

Next in this list, which is very likely incomplete, is the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, of the opposition newspaper Novaïa Gazeta, who was shot dead on the day of the Russian leader's birthday. The opposition figure Sergei Magnitsky, famous for his denunciations of important corruption cases involving high-ranking officials of the regime, died in prison in 2009 after months without receiving medical attention for his pancreatic cancer.

On 19 January 2009, human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastassia Baborova were shot dead in the heart of Moscow. In December 2006, former spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London with polonium 210, and Chechen activist Natalia Estemirova was kidnapped and shot dead in the city of Grozny, Chechnya.

Another journalist, Mikhail Beketov, died after being savagely tortured, and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot dead in February 2015 while walking across a bridge just steps from Red Square and the Kremlin.

Pro-democracy activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April 2023, was poisoned twice, in 2015 and 2017, before being released in 2025 in a prisoner exchange with the West. Former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter miraculously escaped with their lives after being poisoned with navichok gas in Salisbury, not to mention those who died in mysterious circumstances for having criticised Russian intervention in Ukraine.

I confess that I do not believe in the good will of Vladimir Putin or anyone of his ilk.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».