When did Vladimir Putin become a "Putinist"?

 

1999: Russia brutally invades Chechnya, destroying entire cities. Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac liked Vladimir Putin very much, but I was upset at him. I even helped send a truck of food, medicine and relief material to Chechnya, ("Convoi syndical pour la Tchétchénie",  2000), which the Russian army let our truck driver and leader, Eric Aragon, distribute himself in the refugee camps, but the French media did not support us and observed a complete silence. I also donated some money to an outstanding team of Chechen performing artists in a fundraising tour in France, again in complete media silence.

(How I wish a single man was able to drive a relief truck 4,000km to Palestine, sleeping in the truck at night, without getting killed or robbed, without the food getting looted or destroyed, without the truck being bombed, to distribute the food and relief material himself with his own hands to families, and returning safely with his truck,  and redoing it again and again, year after year!)

Anyway... little could I have known that I was a "Putinist", already!

2001: The United States invades Afghanistan. Vladimir Putin officially supports the invasion.

Georges Bush liked Vladimir Putin a lot. I didn't.

2003: The US and the UK invade Iraq. Tony Blair, who fabricated fake intelligence and had the good fortune that his chief bioweapon engineer, Dr. David Kelly "suicided" in time to facilitate an invasion that would kill 1 million civilians, liked Vladimir Putin very much.

I didn't. 

On 26th June 2003, Putin and Blair sign an agreement on "Long-Term Energy Partnership", including a "North European Gas Pipeline", which became famous,

when it spectacularly vanished 19 years later.

Of course, Madeleine Albright, who famously declared that killing 500,000 Iraqi children was a price "worth it" for weakening the rule of Saddam Hussein, also liked Vladimir Putin very much. But her endorsement didn't change my poor opinion of Putin.

Neither did the high appreciation of war criminal and serial looser Henri Kissinger (Vietnam 1968, Cambodia 1970, Bangladesh 1971, Chili 1973) for Vladimir Putin change my mind.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy also liked Vladimir Putin a lot, especially after Russia didn't react when France bombed Libya after having extracted their signature at the U.N. on a "humanitarian intervention", but instead killed the Libyan President live on TV, along with more than 50,000 other Libyans, captured the Libyan gold, and finally installed religious fanatics at the new government.

My opinion about Vladimir Putin was at the lowest. He was a spineless client of the Western empire, like so many regional leaders before him, a non-descript character.

However, my bad opinion softened a bit in March 2012, when I received a online petition by Amnesty International-USA demanding my signature for:

"asking Russia to speak out against Syria atrocities".

It is still here, including some arguments in the comments section:

https://blog.amnestyusa.org/justice/19-reasons-why-russia-must-speak-out-against-syria-atrocities/#comments

This petition by "Amnesty International-USA" was the first public indication that this time, Russia maybe, maybe only, would not help the West commit yet another genocide. Russia had invaded Chechnya, approved the Western invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, remained silent when Libya was destroyed, but here for the first time I had some hope that the country of Dostoyevski, Bulgakov, Soljenitsyne and Tarkovski may not go along so easily.

And the greatest fear of Amnesty International-USA, and my discreet hope, turned out to become true!

Finally, after 3 years of hesitation, a few days after a visit to Moscow by Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the vanquisher of the Western mercenaries called "islamic state", Russia decided to join forces with the Syrians and the Iranians, and to save Syria from the Western wolves, on 30 September 2015.

I remember this time. 

Just 3 months before, I had launched an online petition to ask the French President Hollande, to stop waging war against Syria. Only 20 people, probably "putinists" like me, signed it. I had no idea if Russia finally would take a stand.

But they did.

I realised that not only Serguei Lavrov, but probably Vladimir Putin himself, had also become a "Putinist", just like us!

After Putin became a "Putinist", I also changed. I started to respect him, and maybe even, to like him.