In an op-ed for British newspaper The Times, Roger Boyes said Russians could no longer view Putin as being able to protect them.
The terrorist attack at a Moscow concert hall exposed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s image as the „great protector“ of his country and showed how he is „losing control,“ according to a British journalist and author who has written about the dictatorship of Nazi Germany.
His piece referred to the Cold War, suggesting that Putin’s political survival was built on being „more protective of the motherland“ than the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as a „steadier hand“ than his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.
Despite the war he started in Ukraine with the February 24, 2022, invasion, „Russian towns have by and large been sheltered from the nastiness. He was the Great Protector.“ However, in Boyes‘ view, he was „no longer.“
This is because the attack on Crocus City Hall on Friday „exposed at once the shakiness of his claim to be Russia’s sword and shield, the unpreparedness of the security apparat for a new threat and the low credibility of the regime’s war rhetoric.“
„The sequencing of events charts how Putin is losing control of the narrative,“ said Boyes, who noted the death of Putin’s most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny, on February 16 and then his rejection of U.
