There is one person who may potentially talk Russian President Vladimir Putin out of his homicidal agenda as he continues to annihilate Ukraine, sparing no pregnant lady or child in his path. Putin’s homeroom teacher from fifth to eighth grade was Vera Dmitriyevna Gurevich.
Gurevich, on the other hand, is much more. She was a mother figure to young Putin, whose own mother, Mariya Ivanovna, was withdrawn as a result of various psychiatric traumas. Her two boys perished in infancy in war-torn Leningrad (today’s St. Petersburg) before Putin. During the blockade of St. Petersburg, Mariya came dangerously close to hunger. She was transported by villagers to the mounds of corpses after fainting from hunger, where she was left until she awoke.
A photo of Putin, aged five, sitting on his mother’s lap with her arm stiffly placed around him as she stares vacantly into the distance, says everything about the heavy mental toll that war and poverty took on the boy and his mother.
Putin was mentored by his teacher instead of his parents since he lacked warmth and love from them. Gurevich, together with Putin’s judo coach and mentor, Anatoliy Rakhlin, is the main reason why Putin ended up in power rather than becoming a criminal or — at the very least — a lost soul. (Rakhlin, whom Putin regarded as a second father when he was younger, died in 2013.)
Putin was a disturbed adolescent who was prone to getting into fights. Putin, according to Gurevich, was “extremely nimble, restless, and full of energy.” He couldn’t sit still, continuously peering into his classmates’ notepads from the left, right, and behind him, and diving beneath his desk to retrieve a pen or pencil that he was dropping all the time,” she said in her memoir.
Gurevich stated that young “Volodya” got into fights and “would claw himself into the offender, hang on him with his entire weight and seize him, fighting like a bulldog.”
Gurevich also talks about a visit she took to Putin’s parents when he was 11 years old in September 1964. They shared a freezing, communal flat in a vermin-infested building, and she’d discovered that Putin was involved with a gang of thugs who had a “negative impact” on him. Gurevich had gone to beg his parents to talk to their son, but she quickly found that Putin was a latch-key boy who lived alone until 5 p.m., surviving on a piece of bread and a bottle of milk or buttermilk, despite the fact that his mother had cooked his supper.
Both of Putin’s parents died within a few months of each other, from cancer, in 1999.
Gurevich urged her student, “Enough bumming around, get busy with school,” as she describes in her book. Putin said that if he wanted to, he “could accomplish his entire coursework in one hour.”
That day, though, was a watershed moment. Gurevich lavished attention on “Volodya” as he became more serious about his studies. She was also his German language tutor, and outside of school, she became a friend and mentor. Meanwhile, when Putin’s instructor had to teach at a technical school for architects in the evenings and her husband had to go on a business trip, Putin would occasionally babysit her girls. Young Putin would visit the Gurevich residence to observe the girls and sometimes spend the night. Now that we’re on the straight and narrow,
Putin’s parents both died of cancer in 1999, just a few months apart. During his New Year’s Eve address that year, former Russian President Boris Yeltsin stated that he would nominate then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as Acting President of the Russian Federation until an out-of-cycle election could be place. Putin was elected president for the first time on March 26, 2000, with 52.94 percent of the vote.
Putin revealed that he still calls Gurevich, who is now 88, to inquire about her health during his annual “Direct Line with the President.” Putin’s passion for Gurevich is undeniable, as demonstrated by numerous images and videos of the two throughout the years. When he’s with her, the deadly Russian dictator’s expression lights up, and a rarely seen smile appears on his face.
Now Putin is hell-bent on destruction, and even members of his inner political circle seem unable to talk him out of it. It is unlikely that a fellow male Kremlin operative would hold much sway, 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 reported that friends of Putin’s Swiss-based lover, Alina Kabaeva, are begging her to go to Moscow to persuade him to end the war, it is much likelier that Gurevich, whom he idolizes and credits for his ascendancy, could convince her former student to halt the violence.
Having no leverage over Russia’s brutal president, Washington’s best chance of stopping Putin is to activate “back channels” — informal, secret, diplomatic communications between countries that, when hidden from the public, allow one or both parties in a confrontation to save face when backing down. But, for a backchannel to work, the mediator must have an outsized influence on the person who must be coaxed into believing his course of action is not in the best interest of his country or the world.
If we have any hope of stopping Putin’s carnage in Ukraine, Vera Gurevich may be our best bet. If the United States, thinking out of the box, can somehow reach her, maybe she could once again divert her former student from the wrong path.