Vladimir Putin Continues to Follow Model of Adolph Hitler

I haven't said much of late about the disaster in the Ukraine or Vladimir Putin's continued use of a game plan once by Adolph Hitler to justify his invasion of neighboring countries while stirring up xenophobia - and more importantly - popular support on the home front.  Substitute the names Hitler and Poland for Putin  and Ukraine and the same pattern becomes unmistakable.  And like Hitler, Putin appears to be stirring up trouble in eastern Ukraine so that he can then claim he has to act to protect "ethnic Russians."   Sadly, many Russians, suffering from a susceptibility to the Russian exceptionalism myth that has lingered for 1000 years are falling for Putin's propaganda campaign.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Putin's reprise of Hitler's 1938 model.  Here are excerpts:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia emphasized on Thursday that the upper chamber of the Russian Parliament had authorized him to use military force if necessary in eastern Ukraine, and also stressed Russia’s historical claim to the territory, repeatedly referring to it as “new Russia” and saying that only “God knows” why it became part of Ukraine.

Speaking in a televised question-and-answer show, Mr. Putin also admitted for the first time that Russian armed forces had been deployed in Crimea, the disputed peninsula that Russia annexed last month immediately after a large majority of the population voted in a referendum to secede from Ukraine.

Mr. Putin’s remarks on eastern Ukraine came as officials from Russia, the United States, Europe and the new government in Kiev were meeting in Geneva for four-way negotiations aimed at resolving the political crisis.

Russia has mobilized troops along the border with Ukraine and in recent days pro-Russian demonstrators have caused widespread unrest throughout the eastern part of the country, seizing police stations and other government buildings and forming roadblocks. There have been several outbursts of violence, including a firefight at a Ukrainian military base overnight in which at least three pro-Russian militiamen were killed.

Mr. Putin said that Russia felt an obligation to protect ethnic Russians in the region, who are a sizable minority. “We must do everything to help these people to protect their rights and independently determine their own destiny,” he said.

It’s new Russia. Kharkiv, Lugansk, Donetsk, Odessa were not part of Ukraine in Czarist times, they were transferred in 1920. Why? God knows. Then for various reasons these areas were gone, and the people stayed there — we need to encourage them to find a solution.”

 As I said, Putin is following Hitler's script closely.