In a Bunker in Lugansk, Just Outside of Moscow

On a recent presidential "visit"

Alexander Rybin

Self-isolated from ordinary Russians, President Vladimir Putin from time to time tries to portray "a closeness to the people and their aspirations." These attempts look pitiful, and caricatured, and only emphasize the President's distance from those he purports to represent. Recently, he is said to have paid a visit to both the Kherson region and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). The people were told that Putin had been to the frontlines. And this exactly repeats the attempt of the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, to stage his own “trip to the front” last year. First, Kadyrov and his servicemen "held a meeting" in some basement, then prayed at a gas station, located on the border of the Rostov region and the LPR, or maybe on the border of the Donetsk People's Republic.

The story is the same with Putin's recent visit to the war zone. A “meeting” in a bunker allegedly in the LPR and a journey to the city of Genichesk, which was declared by Putin’s leadership to be the administrative center of the Kherson region. Kherson itself has now retaken back by the Ukrainian army, so one of course needs a new capital for what remains of the “new Russian region,” so Genichesk – located 130 km in a straight line from the nearest frontline and near the administrative border with Crimea – is the lucky winner. However, a question logically arises about the bunker: was Putin really in the LPR, or was it just for him that several generals were gathered in some bunker near Moscow and depicted the scene of “the president listening to the reports of his military commanders”? Some even claim that instead of the President they sent a double to communicate with the military, but we will not believe such rumors until we receive documented confirmation.

Regarding Kadyrov's "meeting," which according to him took place in a basement "near Kiev," it is known that everything was staged. Opponents of the Chechen ruler found out that in fact the scene was carried out in Kadyrov's ancestral village of Tsentoroy. The opponents' version is also supported by the fact that already a day after the "conference" Kadyrov received Moscow officials under television cameras in Grozny.

Of course, Putin has many more capabilities for organizing security and logistics than the head of Chechnya. And he could get closer to the front line. But! Putin's paranoia about personal safety, about threats to his inner circle, are probably far more developed than Kadyrov's. Therefore, he did not publicly approach the front line, not even within the range of the MLRS HIMARS, which is 80 km.

If Putin were the honest and courageous president that he portrays himself as, he would have left the bunker where he was sitting with the generals on Leganskaya Street – if, I repeat, if the bunker was really located in the LPR. He would talk to residents – military and civilian – in Lugansk. It is quite possible that in this case he would hear something not very pleasant. Then he would get into a car and drive along the destroyed roads to a city – for example, Stakhanov – which the aforementioned HIMARS missiles visit at least twice a month. He would walk among the ruins and talk to the locals who persist in trying to lead a “normal life,” despite the fact that day and night one can hear the artillery in Bakhmut (which Russian reports stubbornly call Artyomovsk). And then through Debaltseve, again along the roads destroyed by military equipment, he would go to Donetsk, a city on the front line, which the armed forces of Ukraine daily subject to fierce shelling.

But Putin won't do that. And it's for the best maybe. Because the more he breaks away from reality, isolates himself from Russia, the greater the chance that Vladimir Vladimirovich, who has finally usurped power in our country, will cease to be a part of our present and, as the writer Alexander Andreevich Prokhanov dreamed in his book Mr. Hexogen, Putin will become the beam of a rainbow. To be transformed into light, it must be said, is not the worst end for a usurper. Many of these characters ended their days much worse.