A remarkable moment – one of the few – in this week’s interview in On 1 with Prime Minister Rutte was his comparison of Putin with Hitler. “If we give in to brutal violence, to this colonization of Ukraine, then we know from Hitler that it does not stop at one country,” said historian Rutte.
The comparison is not new. Several commentators have previously pointed out that Putin’s annexation of the Donbas is reminiscent of the anschluss, with which Hitler appropriated Austria and the Sudetenland before World War II. As a mass murderer, Putin is now also starting to follow in the footsteps of Hitler (and Stalin and Mao). Although he has not yet committed the industrial murder of the Nazis, the talent for it seems to be in the bud. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki thinks Putin is even more dangerous than Hitler and Stalin because he has more dangerous weapons.
The comparison of Putin to Hitler was made much earlier by Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013 under Obama. In 2014, when Putin occupied Crimea, Hillary compared that action to Hitler’s annexations in the 1930s. According to Hillary, Putin threatened peace in Europe.
She came under criticism from some Russia experts, such as Kathryn Stoner of Stanford University, who found the comparison “exaggerated” because “Putin does not seem to have any intention of spreading over Ukraine and occupying this area permanently.”
We also had (and still have) such a Russia expert in the Netherlands, named Wierd Duk. On the website of Window on Russia he wrote in a lengthy review of Putin in 2016: “He is an autocrat – not a dictator and not an expansionist, as is often claimed.”
He concluded with the following admonishing analysis: “If the West wants to improve relations with Moscow, leading politicians, opinion makers, business leaders and others will have to move away from the ruling frame in which Vladimir Putin is the bogeyman (“He is Hitler” in the words of Hillary Clinton) and the West is not to blame. As shown here, the Russians do have valid reasons to distrust the intentions of the Western elites. It would be good to name that beam in your own eyes, if only to tackle international terrorism together with Putin, as the Russian president suggested in Bayonne in 2005 on the construction site of ‘De Traan’. A new, pointless Cold War with Russia in these dangerous times will serve no one.”
That is what this Russia expert wrote two years after Putin’s annexation of Crimea and the murderous downing of MH17 over Ukraine. Duk also tweeted about that downing in 2016: „How can de Volkskrant now say that Russians ‘in all probability’ shot down MH17? That really can’t be such a statement.”
As a Russia expert, Duk is still allowed to regularly appear in the media. Even he now dares to accuse Putin of “criminal” behavior and, yes, compare it to Hitler in a tone as if he had never claimed otherwise. He seems to have completely switched over to “the ruling frame in which Vladimir Putin is the bogeyman”. Wierd Duk side by side with Hillary Clinton! It’s not a face.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of September 30, 2022