Putin in Korea and Vietnam amid the cannibalism of Russia’s war
Like Crimea, Korea is key to destabilising Asia as well as Europe, amid permanent tensions and growing winds of war elsewhere. This seems to be the real purpose of Putin's visits, which from China and Uzbekistan to Korea and Vietnam are part of a plan for a new "world order" while trying to instil fear in both East and West.
With his recent visits to North Korea and Vietnam, Vladimir Putin has crossed every limit in degrading Russia's reputation. According to an expression attributed to the poet Anna Akhmatova, the "Vegetarian Years" are over in Russia, as the great dissident of the Stalinist era wrote in her diaries in the 1950s.
Comparing the 1920s under Lenin after the revolution to the 1930s under Stalin's terror, she said that the Soviet Union went from a "relatively vegetarian period" to “full cannibalism” with the most appalling repressions.
Akhmatova went beyond her own family tragedy, which had overwhelmed her husband Nikolai Gumilev, another major figure in Russian literature of the early 20th century, who was caught up in the first waves of deportation to penal colonies. Along with 96 other members of the intelligentsia of Petrograd (later Leningrad), accused of taking part in the so-called "military conspiracy” by Prof Vladimir Tagantsev (similar to the attempt to discredit the armed forces of Putin's Russia), he was eventually shot.
As Akhmatova recounts, the Vegetarian Years ended in December 1934 with the assassination of Sergei Kirov, the rising star of Leningrad communism, whose shadow had become too big for the Georgian-born dictator, ushering in the years of the "Great Terror”.
With the death in another penal colony of Putin's main opponent, the martyr of street protests Alexey Navalny, we are back to the feelings of the most triumphant Stalinism, celebrated in recent days by Kim Yong-un and Nguyễn Phú Trọng.
This symbolic story illustrates precisely this aspect of the most extreme Putinism, as is increasingly evident after his recent plebiscitary re-election and enthronement. A notorious criminal, a Satanic cult member and cannibal, Nikolai the “Duke" Ogolobyak, redeemed himself in the war in Ukraine, but was arrested again, on his way home, for drug trafficking.
In 2010 he was sentenced to 20 years and sent to a maximum security colony for the ritual murder of four teenagers, but last year, he enlisted in the so-called Shtorm Z, a penal military unit sent to the front in Ukraine, and then rewarded with a presidential pardon.
In 2008 the "duke" led a Satanic cult that delighted in dismembering youths, with several blood rituals in which they sacrificed cats, dogs and young people, getting a kick out of eating their flesh and drinking their blood.
Ogolobyak, who was the only adult in the group, received the harshest sentence. But in Ukraine, he fought for only six months, returning home triumphant and free, but no one at the front wants him back after his latest offences, given his rather appalling behaviour even among his fellow soldiers. Now he lives quietly at home with his mother, wearing the badge of “hero of the fatherland”.
An even more paradoxical case is that of Andrei Orlov, a mild-mannered Russian from the Tomsk region in Siberia who shot his best friend with a rifle in the side during an ordinary vodka drinking binge. Sent to a penal colony camp, he finally got to go to the war, earning money, after his initial application as a volunteer had failed because of some bureaucratic mess-up.
At his trial, he said that "if I hadn't been drunk, I would have killed him, but at least I earned my ticket to Ukraine."
The cannibals of Russia’s war are thus looking with enthusiasm at the parades of their great leader in Pyongyang and Hanoi, where Putin went in the first place to stock up on weapons and ammunition, and perhaps to work out some other, more effective nuclear threat than the warships sent to Cuba, a threat that fizzled on arrival in Havana harbour.
In addition to the "eternal and strategic" friendship with Pyongyang, the visit to Hanoi revived memories of 20th century glories when the socialist republic was at war with France and then the United States, when the Soviet Union also protected its ally from China, which now looks disdainfully at Putin's parades around its realm.
While North Korea can help Russia militarily, Russia provides Vietnam with about 70 per cent of its military strength, although concerns about international sanctions are pushing Hanoi to envision other suppliers like South Korea, Japan, India, and Czechia.
Yet, standing with Russia can help rebuild a protective wall against the "great colonisers" of the Western world. At the same time, Russia relies heavily on Vietnamese raw materials, while Russian tourists can indulge in the charms of Southeast Asia since they are now excluded from Europe and the West.
In his meeting with Kim Yong-un, Putin again reiterated that "Russia is fighting the gegemon," the US hegemonic devil, and greatly appreciates North Korea's support in its holy war.
“I am talking about our struggle with the colonising and hegemonic policy that has been imposed on us for many decades by American imperialism and its satellites, especially against the Russian Federation,” the Kremlin boss said.
In fact, US sanctions envoy in Europe, David O'Sullivan, insisted that new forms of pressure must be found against Russia in order to stop the war in Ukraine, which will only end when Putin is forced to withdraw troops.
O'Sullivan spoke of Russia's "policy of cannibalism", stripping technologies and other parts of the weapons industry, which is causing suffering not only for the people in Ukraine, but also in Russia, as well as South Asia and the Pacific, where Putin is trying to extend his influence with these visits.
After all, lest we forget, Kim Yong-un’s grandfather, the "great leader" and "eternal president" Kim Il-sung, was a Red Army captain, and came to power thanks to Moscow, when Stalin created the "Korean People's Democratic Republic" and sent weapons to Pyongyang, the same way Putin did when he annexed Crimea and Donbass and gained recognition of Russian sovereignty over those territories.
The main difference is that Stalin did not annex North Korea, even though he could have, as he did with the Mongols of the Siberian republic of Tyva (formerly Tuva).
As late as the 1940s Tuva was considered part of China but was annexed by Stalin’s Soviet Union, a situation only recognised by one other state, Mongolia. Now it is part of the Russian Federation, but not without challenges as both Tuva and Buryatia are pushing for independence.
An iconic figure in Tyva is former Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, who despite recent purges, is still in the Kremlin's security council, to maintain control over these Asian territories from which most of the fighters in Ukraine come.
Now the visit to North Korea underscores Russia's ghastly East Asian alliances, which could implicate North Korea in nuclear threats against the entire world.
Like Crimea, Korea is key to destabilise Asia as well as Europe, amid growing tensions and winds of war elsewhere. This seems to be the real purpose of Putin's trip, creating a new “world order”, from China and Uzbekistan to Korea and Vietnam, while trying to instil fear in East and West.
At such junctures, Russians are increasingly overwhelmed by cannibalism, erasing all traces of the "Vegetarian Years”. If before the invasion of Crimea 10-12 per cent of the Russian population was interested in politics, now it is closer to zero.
Political psychology and social anthropology show that the will to oppose a totalitarian regime depends not only on fear and personal risks, but also on repulsion towards Russia’s alliances with the various Frankensteins in Asia, Africa, and to some extent in Europe and America. The paradox is that in Mary Shelley's gothic novel, Frankenstein was a vegetarian.
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