This Phrase Has Become A Meme

• Vadim Denisenko
• 8.10.2026, 16:10

Who "tricked" Putin?

Russia’s top leadership has once again claimed that Europe has deceived Russia. This statement no longer comes as a surprise and has long since become a meme.

But in reality, it is archetypal of Putin in particular and of Russians in general.

1. We should start with Putin’s canonical autobiography, *From the First Person*, published even before he first ran for president of the Russian Federation. There is a particularly noteworthy episode in it: during one of his training sessions, Putin was paired up for sparring with a member of the USSR national team. Putin got the better of him, but the victory was awarded to his opponent because he was a “national team member,” as Putin recalls with resentment in his biography.

An “outstanding judoka” might have chosen not to mention such a triviality. But he cannot help but mention it. After all, this is the foundation of one of Putin’s core myths, which he projects onto all of Russia: Putin (Russia) can only be defeated by deception. He interprets all his defeats and failures as deception on the part of those whom, for some reason, he had to trust.

2. “Russian World” is an ideologeme in which history has completely triumphed over philosophy. Moreover, this history itself is tailored to the specific tasks of the present day. So, the entire history of Russia (which, let me remind you, is an ideology) as interpreted by Putin is about how Russia was deceived, but how it always reclaimed this very true history, which cannot be rewritten.

3. At a certain stage, traitors were added to this narrative of deception, although Putin still hesitates to openly criticize, for example, Lenin. Gorbachev, however, was definitively classified as a traitor at the last Valdai Forum, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Medinsky rewrites the history textbook again tomorrow, even though “history cannot be rewritten.”

4. Deception as the cause of all defeats—this is a fundamental myth of modern Russia. And without understanding this, it is very difficult to analyze what Vladimir Putin says and does.

Vadim Denisenko, “Facebook”