There are so many similarities and differences between Putin and Museveni, and I was intrigued to think about the two after the recent Russian- Africa meeting in Russia.
Putin seems to have been secretly prepared by the powerful people to become the president of Russia. He was never involved in risky KGB missions abroad. Here’s the thing; most people in the KGB thought of him as a ” fala ” meaning ” nobody “, but he changed when he got into power. Other members of the intelligence community downplayed his work. The Mediocre Crop of KGB – ended up doing basic Counterintelligence work – never leaving East Germany or USSR – mainly focusing on spying on KGB agents to see if they had turned traitor.
Most referred to him as an officer worker and other things. He, however, received the same training as most other KGB personnel, but he was an administrator and not really a “spy”. He ran the Potsdam, East Germany office of the KGB as a Lt. Colonel for three or four years until the breakup of the Soviet Union. While in that position he made a lot of friends and contacts in the process – he also probably collected a lot of information about people who visited HQ. East Germany was (and still is) central to the European theatre of many spy agencies including KGB.
He was in New Zealand a couple of times as a Bata shoe salesman. Nobody knows exactly whether he was genuinely selling shoes or gathering intelligence. Then he left the KGB and started his political career in St. Petersburg.
The most important job of a spy is to be able to defer being seen as important from other agencies including internal ranks until such a time that the most critical part of one’s mission is complete.
Once an agent “earns” the status of “important” then any of the professional agencies will deem him due for rotation, promotion or retirement. That’s exactly what happened with Putin;Yeltsin picked him as his successor, became president, and the rest is history.
Now we know that the top men are always buried in insignificant postings in spy networks to never have them in the spotlight. If former spy chiefs and his former colleagues are saying that he was not doing anything important, it only means that he was probably doing well his job. If you read Putin’s People by Catherine Belton, it details his life and rise to power.
However, there’s another theory that it was Berezovsky, an oligarch and a billionaire, a part of Yeltsin’s “family” and, some say, Russia’s former clandestine ruler, who brought Putin to power. Still, because he was KGB, he, very slowly, after many years, was finally able to accomplish an incredible feat: defeat the strongest oligarchs, and steamroll over the weaker ones, bending them to his will. That’s why it’s difficult for any of them to rise against him during the Ukraine war.
Putin banned alcohol advertising in Russia. He does not drink it and advocates healthy life without alcohol. Winemakers from southern Russia made a big deal about it during the 2018 World Cup, as they could not advertise their products on TV or Billboards for tourists to see.
Museveni, on the other hand, doesn’t drink alcohol or eat pork, but allows alcohol advertising. Both men are a few steps away from being Muslims if Allah wills. Putin actually does everything to protect Muslims in his country compared to Museveni.
Just like Museveni, Putin harboured personal ambition to become president while still young. Putin spent his entire life preparing for a major war between Russia and the West. Growing up, he was ever mindful of the Nazis in German, the Western invaders, who took the life of his older brother in the Leningrad siege. This family tragedy played no small part in leading Putin to join the KGB at the height of the Cold War. He hoped to defend the Russian people against similar tragedies at the hands of foreign invaders.
The breakup of the USSR was the single most heart-breaking tragedy that he endured in his lifetime. Upon becoming president of Russia, Putin supposedly resolved to do all that he could to try to reunite the Soviet Union. Throughout the 1990s, Putin watched as the Russian economy and the nation that he pledged to defend against foreign invaders disintegrated.
For Putin, the war in Ukraine will likely be the defining moment of his life. The future of Russia and humanity is at stake. Either the 21st Century will remain an Atlantic Century, wherein the US and its Western European allies act as hegemons over Eurasia, or it will be a Eurasian century dominated by Russia and China.
Museveni, on other hand, while in secondary school, told his friends that he was going to be president of Uganda, and his friends simply laughed at him, according to the late Eriya Kategeya. He then started up a debating club in school where he used to discuss politics and history of Uganda with about five of his friends, according to his book, the Mustard Seed. The same debating club idea continued while he was at university in Tanzania, only that it expanded to include the likes of late Garanga of Southern Sudan, Mulyanyamuli Ssemogere(who later became his RDC and Katikiro of Buganda), and several others. He later used some of the same guys to start FRONASA that transformed into PRA and later NRA. As they say, the rest is history. His ambition was simply to be president of Uganda and unite the east Africa countries. He has found the later ambition difficult just like Nyerere and others before him did.
That’s why I pity guys who compare Museveni to some singer who has clearly made Museveni’s life easy since the end of the 2020-21 elections. Literally everybody can see that the NUP “Bear” is really a Facebook tiger. It’s understandable if some of you think this is anti- Bobi propaganda, but it’s actually what’s literally happening nowadays.
Basically, Putin and Museveni are rooted in the similar (not the same) archetype; but they are different. Museveni is a bit flamboyant while Putin is more introvert, cerebral (pensive) and enigmatic. They share two common traits: alpha male image and politeness. There are other excellent examples: Fidel Castro, Mahatma Gandhi (yes, the great Gandhi), Che Guevara, Subhash Chandra Bose, Thomas Sankara – all of them were viewed as Alpha males and all of them were very polite with women and always courteous to their staff and audience.
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