Perhaps more than in the distant Soviet past, Moscow today sports a bravado that is facilitated by a new element: reason.
With the apologies of self-determination and human rights, peoples and cultures have been massacred in the last decade. It can not now decide who has "self-determined" countries that are far away and fundamentally unknown to their citizens, such as Libya or Egypt, to hinder legitimate requests from the Russian-speaking community who are asking to rejoin their most desired homeland.
The writer is a journalist who has developed in recent years the uncomfortable propensity to no longer drink the lies that are quietly given to fellow citizens.
Three years ago I realized that the manipulation of information can trigger and legitimize wars like the Libyan one.
It was a very serious moral lesson: the press had excessively inflated the figures on the victims of the repression of Gaddafi to justify the intervention of countries that had a great interest in doing business with opponents who would have signed blank bills to go to power .
So it was and Italy, which was Libya's main trading partner, lost this privilege (paid dearly with decades of accusations and compensation for having, at the time, built a nation from nothing).
After Libya, it was Syria.
Three years ago I wondered if it was because of the lack of oil that the "regime" of Damascus was not destabilized.
However, I decided to deepen my knowledge of Syria through the experience of fellow countrymen who have worked there for years, someone for half a century!
The report was the exact opposite of what is being told: if there was a place in the Middle East where discrimination and religious intolerance were constitutionally and actively prohibited, that was Syria. A different result from what is daily attributed to the "Alawite regime".
On the one hand, the country had the good fortune to fall in the war after Libya, not allowing those who had previously lied to repeat the script (see the use of gas), on the other the misfortune of becoming the target of every criminal extremist who wants to find a purpose in life by slaughtering his fellow men.
Until now, Putin's firm determination to support Assad has allowed the Syrian government to survive and face a civil war in its third year of business.
Last month, US President Obama went on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and the US reassured the hosts of their willingness to continue to cooperate to strengthen the Syrian opposition "politically and militarily".
Now, since no politician can ignore the term "compromise" between Russian brothers in Ukraine and Syrian friends who will choose to save Putin? And on the other hand, among Ukrainian friends and Saudi brothers who will choose to save Obama ?
I am afraid that the escalation of these days will only serve to increase the price of a barter.
Andrea Cucco
