By Erik Dolson
“You made me do this. I told you I would.”
It’s not particularly clever, but too often effective: Abusers threaten that abuse will only get worse if resisted, and say it’s the victim’s fault that the abuse continues. Abusers portray themselves as the one suffering while “rules” change and abuse escalates.
Fear is delivered by chaos, but more insidious are feelings of helplessness that weaken resolve.
So goes Putin, long an abuser of his own people and now, more visibly of Ukraine. Yesterday Putin announced annexation of Ukrainian territory he’s been unable to conquer through his poorly executed war.
Annexation allows him to justify escalation, possibly to the use of nuclear weapons, then to say “We said we will defend our homeland using any weapon we have.”
Never mind the border of Mother Russia will be redrawn into Ukraine in a process the world knows is a sham. Putin’s hope is that his lie will at least delay if not blunt protest at home, allow him to fire “tactical” nukes into Kyiv and threaten Europeans sending support to Ukraine.
“You made me do this. I told you I would.”
Putin is also calling for a draft of Russian citizens he will send into combat, something he has avoided until now to minimize unrest in Moscow and St. Petersburg. By moving the border into Ukraine through annexation, Putin gets around a prohibition of sending conscripts to battle in a “foreign” conflict.
Instead, draftees will be defending Mother Russia!
Every abuser has a cover story that justifies what they do. Putin’s is that Ukraine is run by Nazis, that Russia is “threatened” by Ukraine, Europe, the U.S., NATO. These lies hide the fact that Russia is not nearly the country it could have been after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Though there were many mistakes made in the West (greed), much of the fault for this can be credited to Putin’s thirst for wealth, power, and glory.
Abusers don’t care about truth, or even about who knows they are lying. They seek only plausible deniability. They craft a story they will repeat any time their actions are questioned, while they shackle their victims with fear.
“You made me do this. I told you I would.”
In Russia that’s fear of secret police, of arrests under laws always changing to target opponents, of murder via shootings, poisonings, drownings and falls from windows, all barely hidden. In Europe, it’s fear of nuclear warheads.
But there’s another threat driving Putin’s actions: it’s that Russians might see improvement in the lives of Ukrainian neighbors, and then ask why Russians were left behind in a kleptocracy governed by a thug, if the real fascist isn’t in Moscow.
Freedom is the only defense against abusers who say “You made me do this. I told you I would.” They won’t stop until they no longer have power to make threats, create fear, cause pain.
Which is why Ukraine must win.
True and so sad commentary on the situation.