In its own letter head the Russian Ambassador protested strongly the title of our commentary published under the title President Putin Must Not See Himself as Tsar and Overambitious like Hitler.
His Excellency the Ambassador has expressed his acute dissatisfaction and anger about the implication of the title in his view. We reproduce the letter in part conveying amply his reasons of objection:
We noticed an editorial opinion titled “President Putin Must Not See Himself as Tsar and Overambitious like Hitler” which was published by your newspaper on February 4 this year. We consider such a comparison of the President of Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, with the racist, totalitarian dictator who orchestrated extermination of entire ethnicities, killing tens of millions of people, to be unacceptable and provocative. No one should forget that it was the erstwhile Soviet Union, which made a decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazism. The total human losses in the Great Patriotic War amounted to 26.6 million. So there can be no greater
insult to Russia, than comparing its top leadership to Hitler.
The editor’s version:
We had no intention of comparing President Putin, a world leader of a great country like Russia. We sincerely wanted him not to be excessively ambitious like hated Hitler who brought disaster not only for him and his country but also for the whole world. Now the military power of destruction is unimaginably manifold higher to annihilate the whole world.
The title was meant to express our deep agony for Russia as well as for the whole world about the terrible unintended consequences if a wrong trigger was pulled or wrong button was pressed. In the body of our opinion we tried to expose the doom scenario being developed resulting from mobilisation of the highest demonstration of Russian military might along the Ukrainian border raising spectre of invasion of Ukraine. We also expressed anxiety about the Western military response.
We do not deny there is scope of differently interpreting the title of the commentary but surely we did not compare your leader with Hitler. We wanted to warn him not to take unnecessary risks devastating the whole world.
We said it is neither for America nor for Russia to decide Ukraine’s fate. A free country should decide its destiny by its own people.
We do not say that there was no room for misunderstanding. But we hope our clarification will erase such a misunderstanding about our view as regards your leader. Our ideological difference is one thing but showing disrespect to the leader of a great country is unacceptable to us. We might disagree with any leader’s policy of the East or the West, rightly or wrongly, but that is no malice.
