Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the western public has been carpet-bombed with the claim that Russian president Vladimir Putin is some sort of unhinged madman. This notion is being feverishly spread by the establishment and those in its pay: the political class, the media and the commentariat, career diplomats and technocrats as well as those connected to the security and intelligence communities.

The most remarkable thing about the Mad Vlad claim is that it is obviously false.

Whatever Vladimir Putin may be, he is certainly no irrational madman. This much should be obvious to everyone with the eyes to see.

A former KGB operative, Vladimir Putin is a wily person of demonstrated ability. After all, he managed to bring control and order to a vast country that was largely in disarray when he took it over at the age of 48. He adroitly managed to keep himself in power for over two decades while navigating and overcoming a number of crises and challenges along the way. Through it all, he has shown himself to be intelligent, steel-willed, calculating, shrewd, self-controlled, determined, cunning, and patient.

These are hardly the qualities of a lunatic.

We have dealt with Putin for 22 years and, during that whole time, no one seriously suggested or maintained that he was crazy. Quite to the contrary, for almost a decade after his ascent, he was viewed as a capable man of considerable talents.

For years the Western establishment considered Putin a “man with whom we could do business.” He was seen as “liberal, humane, and decent European.” He was described as a person of “’alert, controlled poise’ and ‘well-briefed acuity,’ who was open to anything, even Russia joining NATO.”

And yet less than a week ago, on the day he invaded Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was nearly unanimously declared – contrary to all evidence – a “madman” by members of the Western establishment.

The question is this: Why did they decide to suddenly gaslight and brainwash people with such a patent lie that so obviously contravenes reality?

They did this to hide and conceal the gargantuan blunder they have committed over Ukraine.

By convincing the public that Putin is a madman, they can portray his move on Ukraine as an irrational, unexpected, impulsive, and unjustifiable act of an unbalanced mind.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Putin’s move was not irrational, impulsive, or unjustifiable. And it was certainly not unexpected.

For years Putin had warned that including Ukraine in NATO was a red line for Russia. It should not be difficult to understand his position. It is not unreasonable for Russia to object to the presence of what it perceives to be a hostile military alliance on its border with a country that has historically been either part of Russia or within its sphere of influence. Russia does not want to allow such a threat to its security for similar reasons the United States would not allow Russia to build a military base in Cuba.

In their drive to implement a New World Order, however, Western globalists have been dismissive of Russia’s security concerns. Russia continued its strenuous objections and warned that if they were not taken seriously, they would take the necessary action to keep Ukraine out of NATO. The last time Russia made this clear was in November of last year.

This is how Wikipedia describes this occasion:

“On 30 November 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that an expansion of NATO's presence in Ukraine, especially the deployment of any long-range missiles capable of striking Russian cities or missile defence systems similar to those in Romania and Poland, would be a "red line" issue for Russia. Putin asked U.S. President Joe Biden for legal guarantees that NATO would not expand eastward or put "weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory."

Do you want to know what kind of response Putin received to his legitimate security concerns? It was given by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. This is what he told Putin:

“It's only Ukraine and 30 NATO allies that decide when Ukraine is ready to join NATO. Russia has no veto, Russia has no say, and Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence to try to control their neighbors.”

Do you get the insult and the humiliation of this response? Not only did the pompous globalist Stoltenberg refuse to address Russian security fears, but he also implied that pip-squeak countries like North Macedonia, Portugal – who happened to be members of NATO – have a greater say than Russia in whether a large country on its border joins the alliance.

Having ridden roughshod over their populations for nearly two years with their lockdown and vaccine regime, the Western globalists grew arrogant, overbearing, and overconfident. They lost touch with reality and assumed that everyone would submit to their chicanery in the same way that their own docile populations went along with their random edicts and mandates.

Putin, however, would not bend to the globalist chicanery and did exactly what he had kept warning about for years if Russian concerns were not adequately addressed: He invaded Ukraine to stop NATO’s expansion into the country with which he shares nearly 1000 kilometers of border, and which once hosted Russia’s capital.

The invasion of Ukraine was a pre-announced, rational act of a strongman who felt increasingly encircled and threatened by what he deems to be an antagonistic military block.

Putin’s move came as a great shock to the Western elites who could have not imagined someone standing up to them in such a bold way. They were completely unprepared for the obvious and went into panic mode as they realized how many innocent lives could be lost to their incompetence and pomposity.

As the Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Putin exposed the globalists’ hubris and ineptitude. As the Russian military advanced speedily through the vast expanses of that land, the shocked elitists were nowhere to be seen. It was only the heart-breaking bravery of the Ukrainian people that saved them from complete exposure and humiliation.

And it is at this junction that their patently absurd “Putin is a madman” misinformation play comes in.

The “Putin is a madman” canard is meant to shift the blame in the eyes of the public for the Ukrainian tragedy on the allegedly irrational act of a “crazy” man rather than assigning it to the right people: the overbearing, domineering, arrogant Western globalists who treated the legitimate security concerns of a great nuclear power with contempt.

In Putin, they encountered reality in the form of a wiley and cunning strongman who would not yield to their edicts and hollow pronouncements in the submissive way they were used to from their own badgered populations.

They were in for a rude awakening. For two years the pompous globalists had been enriching themselves while tormenting peoples of the world with their useless and destructive lockdowns and dangerous and largely ineffective injections. If you think this is a harsh exaggeration, please read this from Yahoo News:

“Lockdowns during the first COVID-19 wave in the spring of 2020 only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% in the U.S. and Europe, according to a Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of several studies. "While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted," the researchers wrote. "In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument." The researchers – Johns Hopkins University economics professor Steve Hanke, Lund University economics professor Lars Jonung, and special advisor at Copenhagen's Center for Political Studies Jonas Herby – analyzed the effects of lockdown measures such as school shutdowns, business closures, and mask mandates on COVID-19 deaths.”

While the people suffered under their nonsensical edicts, the globalists kept accumulating untold riches. Consider this headline from CNN: “As millions fell into poverty during the pandemic, billionaires' wealth soared.”

Greedy for ever more money, the globalists sought to pull Ukraine into their World Order so they could suck out money from it to line up their own pockets even further. They have been shown the way by none other than Globalist-in-Chief Joe Biden whose family has already siphoned millions of dollars out of Ukraine through his son Hunter. It is fully in character that Biden is also a Covidista par excellence who forced millions of unwilling Americans to take the Covid injections by pressuring employers to institute illegal mandates.

Now the globalists’ arrogance and ruthlessness got us into the Ukrainian crisis where we potentially face the threat of nuclear war.

The clever guys that they always are, these wreckers have already managed to blame it all on the Mad Vlad.

Photo credit: President of the Russian Federation

Vasko Kohlmayer was born and grew up in former communist Czechoslovakia, from which he defected. You can follow his writings by subscribing to his Substack newsletter ’Notes from the Twilight Zone’.