Russell Perkins lives in
Concord.

During Donald Trump’s first term as president, speculation ran rampant that Russian President Vladimir Putin had something on Trump he was using as blackmail. I fully believed it myself, but I no longer do.

Since 2016, I have learned that Donald Trump is just not blackmail-able. For blackmail to work against a person, that person must possess traits and emotions such as guilt, shame, embarrassment or morality. Since 2016, Trump has shown over and over again that he has none of those human traits, as shown through his reaction to countless sex scandals, public displays of shocking ignorance and criminal convictions.

Recently, Trump engaged in his two favorite activities — lying and praising murderous world dictators — in a shocking way. He stated that Ukraine started the Russia/Ukraine war and said that Russia had fought hard in Ukraine and lost a lot of troops. He concluded, then, that Russia should get to keep the area of Ukraine they had turned into a moonscape with three years of bombing.

In the past, Trump has called Putin a nice guy and a genius, and he has said that he trusts Putin’s word above that of the CIA. Let’s face it: Trump simply admires and envies dictators, especially Putin. No blackmail needed.

So, just who is this Vladimir Putin that Trump admires so much?

Vladimir Putin has been Russia’s president (pronounced “autocratic dictator”) for 25 years. Over the years he has squeaked out many close “elections” by winning 90% of the vote. As Joseph Stalin once correctly observed, it doesn’t matter who votes, what matters is who counts the votes. Recently, Putin directed the Russian State Duma to amend the Russian Constitution to allow him two more six-year terms. Disdain for your country’s Constitution is another Putin-esque trait Trump possesses.

Nice-guy Putin spent 16 years in the Russian KGB, rising to the rank of colonel before leaving in 1991. The KGB’s function was foreign intelligence and combating internal dissidence. While serving as a spy and secret police member, Putin learned valuable skills, such as how to make Kremlin detractors conveniently disappear. During his 25-year reign many of his critics have continued to succumb to mysterious food poisoning or fall out of tall buildings. In February 2024, though it will be forever impossible to prove, he had his last serious rival, Alexei Navalny, killed while being held in a Siberian prison.

Putin has turned Russia away from the democratic reforms of Boris Yeltsin and converted it into an authoritarian dictatorship which no Russian politician or citizen dares to criticize, something we Americans are also now becoming familiar with. He has called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century” and has made clear his ambition of reconstituting the USSR.

He speaks fondly of the days when there was a true Russian Empire, such as under Catherine the Great, when she ruled most of Europe and Asia. And, small fact check for Trump: On Feb. 24, 2022, Putin put words into action by launching an unprovoked attack on Ukraine with the force of about 200,000 troops. His thinly-veiled justification was to rid Ukraine of its Nazi rulers and free the Ukrainian people. Small fact check for Putin: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a Jew. His grandfather fought Nazis in World War II. There are also no Nazis holding any high-ranking government positions in Ukraine.

Putin and other Russian officials have also repeatedly threatened to use nuclear missiles on the U.S. and other NATO members who oppose their imperialist aims. In January 2024, Putin instructed officials to look into how best to reclaim former Russian “real estate abroad,” such as Alaska.

In its war against Ukraine, which world leaders — except Trump — have rightfully called a genocide, Russia has killed at least 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers and killed thousands more civilians that we know of. Under Putin’s orders they have kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children and taken them to Russia to grow up as future subservient subjects. They’ve bombed churches, schools and hospitals and laid claim to 25% of Ukrainian territory. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin for committing war crimes.

Trump recently endorsed Putin’s demands for Ukraine to forget about joining NATO, surrender its land to Russia and replace Zelenskyy, who Trump called a dictator. This was immediately after Zelenskyy balked at Trump’s effort to extort $500 billion as payment for military aid valued at far less, most of which is paid to American defense contractors.

Until February 2025, I had never been ashamed to be an American.