Putin it into perspective

A few years ago, a friend was showing me around his hometown of Dresden, in what was East Germany when that country was part of the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact alliance.

In a large but simple three-storey building on Angelikastrasse, the Soviet secret police, the KGB, had their local office.

A young officer called Vladimir Putin was stationed there. In 1989, as Communism collapsed and a mob of Germans threatened to storm the KGB, it was Lieutenant-Colonel Putin who faced them down, alone, and warned that his comrades inside were armed and would not hesitate to open fire to protect the “territory” of the Soviet Union.

The people dispersed. The story goes that Putin had asked for military backup from Soviet units stationed nearby, but had been told nothing could be done without a decision from Moscow and, ominously, “Moscow was silent”.

The biographers of Putin emphasise that story, not only to show a man who realised communism, and even the days of a Russian Empire, were over, but who was also always aware that political power is fleeting.

Many things have shaped Putin and many things have shaped modern Russia. The country and its leader are often light years away from how they are portrayed in American and British media.

In saying so, I risk being accused of being an apologist, a wannabe communist or even anti-democratic. All of these are regularly tossed at people who question the narrative of life as enunciated by the mainstream media of the West.

I will be looking on with fascination as Putin makes his first visit to South Africa at the end of this month to attend a meeting of the Brics bloc in Johannesburg.

I know there will be a barrage of reports about the revival of the supposed trillion-rand nuclear build programme. That is interesting because, in the 1990s, the Russians did not take part in our grandiose arms deal because they were not prepared to pay bribes.

Perhaps others were – and that’s how we ended up with inappropriate weapons systems bought from European suppliers. Where we could have had combat-proved MiG29 fighters, we chose more costly and overly sophisticated SAAB Gripen jets.

We bought British Hawk trainers, which were 50 years old, design wise, and chose Westland helicopters for our Navy needs when we could have had tough and more powerful Russian Kamovs.

The Russian package would have cost us half (or less). So, before you go decrying the ANC links with Moscow, look at the reality: this country is, if anything, deep in the pockets of Western capital. In reality, Putin’s Russia and the rest of the Brics countries – Brazil, China and India – are being polite by having their meeting here.

South Africa, as a country and an economy, is, despite what the ANC believes, really chicken feed in the grand scheme of global geopolitics.

But when it comes to thinking about Russia, let’s dump the idea of the bloodthirsty Russian bear and its visions of conquering the globe.

The Russia of the successful Fifa World Cup you saw on TV is not quite the one CNN often likes to portray. It’s been a long time since that day outside the house in Dresden. And the world is a very different place.