Putin can say what he wants, but the truth is clear: Russia, and not Ukraine, is to blame for the war drums. And it’s not just any attacker. Timothy Snyder, a prominent intellectual expert on fascism, explained it recently. “If you are against imperialism, you must be against those who say that neighboring countries do not exist,” Snyder said. “And that is what Putin is doing.”
Snyder is right. Vladimir Putin embodies, today, that aberrant imperialism that he did so much damage in other times, when it was the responsibility of countries like the United States. If someone has been against this interventionist expansion in the past, he must oppose Putin today, without nuances.
Even so, incredibly, one finds voices in Mexico that insist on justifying the atrocities of the imperialist Moscow. Why? They cannot believe, as someone recently told me, that Putin is a hope for the left. It would be absurd: few regimes more openly oligarchic than Moscow’s kleptocracy. Perhaps, then, as a counterweight to the United States? Counterweight to what, exactly? Certainly not to the worst expansionist impulses. What Putin has done in Ukraine is another matter.
