For the past ten years, I’ve heard a great deal of praise for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin — a lot of praise in the Free West, particularly in the United States. Donald Trump has always defended and praised Putin. I chronicled some of this in an October 2020 piece: “Trump and Dictators.”
In December 2015, shortly before the Republican primaries and caucuses began, Joe Scarborough talked with Trump about Putin, in a TV interview. Scarborough pointed out that Putin is the type to bump off his critics and invade foreign countries. “Obviously, that would be a concern, would it not?” asked Scarborough. Trump answered, “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.”
Keeping at it, Scarborough said, “But again, he kills journalists that don’t agree with him.” Trump answered, “Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe.”
Further on in the discussion, Trump said of Putin, “I think that he is a strong leader, he’s a powerful leader, he’s represented his country — that’s the way the country is being represented.”
About two weeks after he was sworn in as president, Trump sat down for an interview with Bill O’Reilly — who said, “Putin is a killer.” The president answered, “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, you think our country’s so innocent?”
In June 2019, Trump enthused about Putin as “a great guy,” “a good person,” and “a terrific person.” Campaigning in 2020, he said, simply, “I like Putin, he likes me.”
I regard that as an honest statement.
Last week, a leading Evangelical figure in our country posted this:
No matter what your thoughts are on Putin, I think we can all agree we need a leader who loves this country as much as he loves his.
— Pastor Mark Driscoll (@PastorMark) February 9, 2024
I thought of Vladimir Kara-Murza, the political prisoner (and a friend of mine). Twice, the Russian state tried to kill him, with poison. Despite the pleading of some friends, Kara-Murza refused to go into exile. He said that his place was on Russian soil, opposing the dictatorship alongside his fellow Russians. Today, he is in solitary confinement at IK-7, in Omsk, Siberia, one of the most hellish prisons in the Russian system.
In 2017, I conducted a long interview with him, published on this site in three parts (here, here, and here). We discussed his mentor and friend Boris Nemtsov — the leader of the opposition to Putin, murdered within sight of the Kremlin in 2015.
Let me excerpt this interview:
Every day, people such as Vladimir Kara-Murza are called “national traitors.” They are “American spies” and the like. In response to this, Kara-Murza talks to me a little about Boris Nemtsov . . .
“He was a great Russian patriot. He gave his life for his country. What more can you do than that? So many other people who are supposedly liberals or democrats from the ’90s chose to settle for a quiet and comfortable existence under the Putin regime, either working for it or keeping their distance from the opposition.”
Nemtsov could have done anything, says Kara-Murza. He was a brilliant scientist . . . and he had extensive, nearly unique experience in Russian politics. He could have taught anywhere in the West. But he never considered it. “This is my country,” he would say, “and I have to fight for it.”
Kara-Murza says, “There is nothing more unpatriotic than stealing from your own citizens, which is what Putin and his cronies are doing. There is nothing more unpatriotic than shutting people up, beating up peaceful protesters, rigging elections, which is another form of stealing — stealing votes from your own people. How is that patriotic?”
According to Kara-Murza, “true patriots are trying to change things. They think that Russia should be a normal, modern, democratic country. People are prepared to fight for it, even at the risk of their own lives. They are the true patriots in Russia.”
Yes.
I hear from the populist Right, constantly, that Putin loves his country. Yet he has stolen from the Russian people without mercy, as Kara-Murza said. He has deprived Russians of fundamental rights. He has abolished independent media and civil society. He imprisons, maims, kills, or exiles his critics. He has dragged his country into a war of annihilation against one of its neighbors. He has built a gangster state, an autocratic kleptocracy.
This is love of country? The true Russian patriots tend to be in prison cells. One of them is Vladimir Kara-Murza. I ask readers: Please remember such Russians. They are among the noblest people on earth.