Putin and awakening

Putin and awakening

Dr. Jassim Taqui

While the US President Barak Obama continues to be out of focus and indifferent to the explosive situation in the Middle East, the Russian President Vladimir Putin shows freshness. For all observers, the state of Russian awakening is profoundly visible.

Like the “Awakening” fiction by Oliver Sacks, the paralyzed patients witnessed some unbelievable rise to normal life using L-Dopa drug. This could happen due to a dedicated work of their physician. The patients in our era are the conscience-dead world leaders. The physician is Putin.  

Putin has demonstrated that he is the leader in command. He took everyone by surprise when he first ordered the end of the Russian military mission in Syria. Subsequently, he asked the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to withdraw his troops from the areas the Syrian army occupied during the ceasefire.

Evidently, both steps are necessary to ensure the success of the peace talks between Assad and the rebels. Putin’s vision is that  ultimately the settlement of the civil war in Syria can only brought about through peaceful means.

Putin has also contributed to saving civilian lives in Syria by ending the Russian military mission there and by pressing for talks to end the conflict.

By all standards, Putin has emerged as a world leader at a time when the US and EU continue to be in a state of hibernation. His case is a classic case of awakening of unprecedented magnitude.

In fact, Putin is rebuilding the Russian motherland. In this regard, the Russian nationalism is on the rise. Russian populist nationalist party LDPR has prepared a draft parliamentary address denouncing previous political activities of last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and first Russian President Boris Yeltsin as “criminal and destructive.”

I venture to say that both of them  along with Shevardnadze played a pivotal role in the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It was that role of the trio that resulted in the global  chaos , anarchy, civil wars and conflicts the world over in which millions of innocent civilians have been killed.