Putin has completed twenty-six years in power this year (he did so in May). He was the second president of Russia, and is its fourth, and for two consecutive terms he and his loyal Dmitry Medvedev alternated as president of Russia and prime minister. President of Russia is the position that was created to replace that of president of the Supreme Soviet, the highest Russian authority during the USSR years. It was held, in the early years, by the dipsomaniac Boris Yeltsin, and then always by Putin, directly or through his puppets: first Medvedev and now Mikhail Mishustin, who serves as prime minister once Putin has ensured (via the 2020 constitutional reform, known as the "reset" reform) that he can continue as president until 2036. How did he do it? He restarted the count of his terms with a law that "erased" the previous two. In this way, he has maintained the limit of two presidential terms, but in practice has added two more (of six years each) because the first two stopped counting.To remain in power, he needs to win elections, but the tendency of his opponents to die prematurely and in circumstances as appalling as they are enigmatic is well known. Journalists like Anna Politkovskaya, Natalia Estemirova, or Paul Klebnikov, exiled magnates like Boris Berezovsky or his collaborator Alexander Litvinenko, the mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin, or political leaders like Boris Nemtsov or Alexei Navalny make up the list of the most prominent personalities allegedly murdered by Putin's regime. Beyond these famous names, the victims of political repression in Putin's Russia number in the tens of thousands, including journalists, activists, writers, politicians, etc.Of these twenty-six years, it has been four and a half years since Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine, while in the West it was still said that he would not dare to do so. In 2022, Putin claimed that the war would be short and that he was carrying it out with the aim of "denazifying" Ukraine, an argument that not even Putin himself remembers anymore. The war has generated hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides and millions of displaced people and refugees, and to this day, no end is in sight. But the invasion (this one really is) and the war in Ukraine have become geostrategic actors that no longer cause surprise or scandal, but are fully normalized within European politics. Like Putin himself, who for a quarter of a century has committed crimes, violations, and breaches of international law in the face of the passivity of the West, underpinned by all sorts of economic, energy, and logistical interests. Europe has begun in recent years a night that will be long and extremely hot (due to climate change and violence), surrounded by howling wolves. It would be good if at some point someone thought about how Europe itself, instead of trying to fight the wolves that now besiege it, has dedicated itself to feeding them.
