"Putin's regime is racing towards collapse," says Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and currently one of the Kremlin's most prominent critics, emphatically.
In an exclusive interview to be published tomorrow in "Israel this week", Kasparov, who found out from Russia in 2013, explains that the latest moves of Russian President Vladimir Putin, such as the general conscription, are drawing to a close.
"The conscription destroys the unofficial internal arts that have worked for years in Russian society. Since the beginning of the war, Putin did not want to draw the big cities into it, first and foremost Moscow and St. Petersburg. Furthermore, for the vast majority of Russian citizens, the war took place only on television. Now it has been A daily, tangible matter. Add to that the economic difficulties, and we see that even governors appointed by Putin express doubts about the importance of recruitment. In other words, the system is starting to break down."
Putin.
"A bully who has been humiliated is no longer a bully", photo: E.P
Kasparov is not moved by the relative paucity of protest demonstrations.
Since it began, the largest and most dramatic recruitments have occurred only in the North Caucasus.
"This is happening on the side of a thumb. You know, when you freeze everything for 22 years, you can't expect everything to thaw in 22 hours.
A Russian army convoy has withdrawn from the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine
"But the process of thawing has begun, and it is clear that it is starting in places like the North Caucasus where there is still some kind of solidarity, family or tribal, in contrast to the big cities where society is very atomistic. Nevertheless, we see events such as the shooting of the commander of a recruitment office, offices being set on fire, and also photos of the masses trying to escape from Russia through the border crossings. After all, this is a spectacle of the end of the empire, which also shows what its true value was. The process has begun. The thaw will take time, but it is clear that the train is traveling in one direction - downhill."
Military parade in Moscow, photo: AP
The great release indeed
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Kasparov has been working night and day to explain that the liberation of Ukraine will also lead to the liberation of Russia from autocracy and imperialism.
"Today it becomes more clear than anything that in the euphoria of 1991, we did not notice that the collapsed Soviet Union was only a shell: the core was the Russian Empire, whose self-understanding is deeply rooted in the darkness of historical consciousness. What does an empire stand for? On fear and violence. It is obvious that Putin is losing his power. Notice how he was humiliated in Samarkand (five leaders forced Putin to wait for a meeting with them on the sidelines of the Shanghai Organization summit; Db).
A humiliated bully is no longer a bully.
After all, his entire control was based on the fact that he could 'put in place' Bush or Merkel, and suddenly it becomes clear that even moderate Central Asian rulers understand that the power relations have changed."
According to Kasparov, the meaning of the war in Ukraine is much greater than a regional conflict.
"It takes the Ukrainian shock to understand that evil is not dead. Ukraine is changing the world, and the war against it is becoming a measuring point in history. This is the revival of the free spirit in the free world."
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