A number of politicians have called to moderate world’s criticism of Putin because “one day Europe will need to talk to Russia anyway”. This is a almost a literal quote from a recent statement of Hubert Védrine (France), something to the effect has been said by Marine Le Pen and many other politicians in EU and US.

The problem I have with this argument is that it entirely accepts the Putin’s notion of Putin being equal to Russia, and Russia being equal to Putin. The same picture is also being pushed inside #Russia, where you can either love Russia and love Putin, because if you don’t love Putin then you don’t love Russia.

Which is equivalent to stating that if you don’t support Macron, then you don’t support France; if you don’t support Biden, you don’t support US; if you don’t support Kaczyński, you don’t support Poland; you don’t support Orban, you don’t support Hungary.

If this logic sounds wildly absurd in all these cases… so why do we accept it for Russia? 🤔