In the movie “John Wick”, the head of the Russian mob in New York City refers to Wick as the Baba Yaga or Bogeyman. (The character John Wick is a legendary assassin with a superhuman tenacity and ability to kill.) Certainly, Vladimir Putin can be looked at as a bogey man, but as a Baba Yaga, he is much more intriguing.
According to Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga is most often portrayed as a deformed and ferocious woman who lives deep in the forest. She flies around in a mortar and wields a pestle. She may help or hinder those who she meets. She is enigmatic and often ambiguous. So what is Putin’s Baba Yaga like and what are his, not her, motivations.
Putin is driven by a burning desire to restore Russia to its past glory. His goal is to “Make Russia Great Again” and that requires territorial conquest – particularly of those nations which were once under the Soviet Union’s dominance. He uses his energy assets, natural oil and coal, to both placate and dominate his enemies. The velvet glove of energy and the mailed fist of military might are always in play. The following quote from Napoleon applies, “To know a nation’s geography is to know its foreign policy.”
Putin is disgusted by the behavior of the Western nations who are abandoning their unifying cultural heritage. Putin sees himself as the champion of Christianity and the ideals of Western civilization. The Western nations, by failing to fight for their heritage, have discarded the stability and freedoms of the civilized Christian West and embraced an uncertain globalist future.
It is obvious that Putin has no respect for the Biden presidency. He sees the current American President and his foreign relations and defense teams as fundamentally weak. Putin’s calculus is that Biden will not go to war to defend Europe or American interests around the world. Not surprisingly, Biden has just admitted as much and stated that he and the NATO allies will employ sanctions. Good luck, Ukraine people, you are on your own.
Putin is angered by the incessant personal attacks from the American government and media. Rather than being respected as a player on the international scene, he is constantly treated with contempt. This has taken a toll on his willingness to be geopolitically reasonable. The following quote from Putin is instructive, “Maybe they have nothing else to do in America but to talk about me.”
One final thought: Putin is upsetting the great globalist reset by demonstrating that nations and territory matter. In that regard, he is the Бáба-Ягá.
