Putin = Poltroon

For those of you not from my era of the Deep South, or who were STEM majors, a poltroon is someone who struts about, a poseur, if you will, full of braggadocio. That is, until danger looms and then they will have departed the local area for parts unknown. Thus a Poltroon is a particular type of coward, and that is what the President of Russia is proving to be, a poltroon of the highest order.

Here we thought the shirtless wood chopping, horseback riding, scorer of seven goals against a professional hockey team, President of Russia was a he-man’s he-man, but since the start of the land grab in Ukraine he has been a mole. Not the spy kind of mole but a real mole. He hides in the recesses of the Kremlin coming up only to check if it is day or night. He sits multiple feet from his underlings at televised meetings shielded by plexiglass, or perhaps it is ballistic glass. He makes pronouncements ex-cathedral or, should we say, ex-Kremlin. He has not been anywhere near the battle field, even on the Russian side where he would be safe. When he meets foreign dignitaries it is within the confines of his fortress.

His opponent meets the public, visits the battle areas, is highly visible and treats openly with foreign diplomats while walking through the streets of Kyiv. The two are as alike as night and day. One openly challenges the enemy, the other cringes behind then walls of his fortress of solitude 280 miles from the Ukrainian border. So the he-man isn’t and the poltroon is. Truth will out.