Why Putin’s one-man rule is dangerous

I took this picture in Kyiv on October 28th 2014, after leading a student election observation of the post-Maidan parliamentary elections for two weeks with Silba - Initiative for Dialogue and Democracy. Kyiv was in a very different place from today, and that election was largely successful, and yet Russian attempts at manipulating the election were widespread. Putin and his personalist regime has taken the next step and gone for full foreign-imposed regime change — and gone off the rails. Note that Putin said “I made the decision to carry out a special military operation.” There’s no one else driving the train. I used to tell my political science students that the more an authoritarian leader looked like Cher or Lady Gaga, the more you could be sure he (almost always he) was leading a personalist regime. With his increasingly obvious botched botoxed face, Putin fits the bill. No one around him disagrees with him. That poses a grave danger to the rest of the world. If he installs a puppet government in Ukraine after the invasion, without any significant consequences or sanctions, he will not stop there. This is the moment for NATO governments to support Ukraine’s government and army with whatever we can. Ukraine is today’s front, but tomorrow’s may be Latvia, Georgia or elsewhere. We cannot pretend to be surprised and unprepared again when that happens.