As Russian President Vladimir Putin moves to take over - perhaps even exterminate - Ukraine, there is one person who could potentially dissuade him from his murderous plan, the New York Post writes.
Her name is Vera Dmitrievna Gurevich, and she is Putin's... fifth- through eighth-grade teacher.
But Gurevich is not just a teacher for Putin. She was a maternal role model for little Vladimir, whose mother, Mariya Ivanovna, was withdrawn, having suffered multiple psychological traumas in life. Her two sons, before Vladimir, died in infancy in war-torn Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).
Mariya herself nearly starved to death during the blockade of St. Petersburg. She fainted from hunger and was carried by the townspeople next to the bodies of the corpses, where she was left until she recovered.
A photograph of Putin, aged 5, sitting in his mother's arms, her arm held rigidly around him as she stares blankly into the distance, says everything about the heavy mental toll that war and poverty took on the boy and his mother.
Deprived of the warmth and love of his parents, little Vladimir found in his teacher his mentor. Gurevich is the primary reason, along with Putin's judo instructor and mentor, Anatoly Rakhlin, that the Russian president climbed the ranks of power, rather than following a path of illegality and ending up a convict or a lost soul. Rakhlin, whom Putin considered a second father, died in 2013.
[/P]Growing up, Putin was a young man who was constantly getting into fights. Gurevich recalled that Putin was "very agile, restless, with energy that overflowed. He couldn't sit still. He was constantly looking at his classmates' notebooks, left, right, left and back, bending under the desk to reach for the pen or pencil that kept dropping,' she wrote in her memoirs about her student 'Vladimir Putin, parents, friends, teachers'. The young 'Volodya' would get into fights, grab the aggressor, hang on him, throwing all his weight on him, and fight like a bulldog," Gurevich also wrote.
She also describes a visit she made to Putin's parents in September 1964, when he was 11 years old. They lived in a cold, communal apartment in a parasite-infested building, and she had learned that Putin was involved in a group that had "bad influence over him."
Gurevich had come to ask the parents to talk to their son, but quickly realized that Putin was a child who lived only until 5 p.m., surviving on a piece of bread and a bottle of milk or buttermilk, even though his mother had prepared his dinner.
"Enough fooling around, get busy with school," Gurevich told her pupil, as she recalls in her book. Putin replied that he could do all he had for school in an hour if he wanted.
But that day was a turning point in his life. As "Volodya" focused on his homework, Gurevich turned her attention to him. She was also his German teacher and became his friend and mentor outside of school. Putin helped her occasionally, babysitting her daughters when she had to teach at a technical school for architects in the afternoons and her husband was away on a business trip. Plus, young Putin started getting good grades, so he decided to study law.
Both of Putin's parents died of cancer, a few months apart, in 1999.
That same year, Boris Yeltsin announced in his New Year's Eve address that he was appointing then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as deputy president of the Russian Federation until elections were held. Putin was first elected president on March 26, 2000, winning 52.94 percent of the vote.
During the annual "Direct Line to the President" event, Putin said he was still calling Gurevich, now 88, to ask her about her health. His love for her is undeniable. It is evidenced by dozens of photos and videos he has with her over the years. When he is with her, he lights up whole and he himself seems warmer.
Now that Putin is teetering on disaster, even members of his inner political circle seem powerless to dissuade him. It is unlikely that another Kremlin man would have much influence over him, as the Russian leader might feel threatened or diminished by what could be perceived as an "order."
A woman, on the other hand, would have more success. While the Post recently noted that friends of Putin's Swiss-based mistress Alina Kabaeva, who lives in Switzerland, are begging her to go to Moscow to convince him to end the war, it is far more likely that Gurevich, whom he adores and credits with his rise, could convince her former student to stop the violence.
With no leverage over Russia's president, Washington's best chance of stopping Putin is to activate "back channels" - unofficial, secret, diplomatic communications between countries that, when not obvious to the public, allow one or both parties to a confrontation to save face when they back down. But for a back channel to work, the mediator must have enormous influence on the person he or she must persuade in order to make him or her believe that his or her course of action is not in the best interests of his or her country or the world.
If we have any hope of stopping Putin's carnage in Ukraine, the Post concludes, Vera Gurevich may be our best bet.
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