The journalist Christopher Hitchens was asked in 2005 for his thoughts on US relations with Russia. He replied that the stupidest thing President Bush ever said was a faith-based endorsement of Putin, which opened the door to an oppressive “one-man one-party” Russia. Furthermore Hitchens accuses Putin of “intervening outrageously” in Ukraine’s self-determination.

Five years later in a 2010 interview (visibly suffering from cancer) Hitchens is asked a similar question. This time he decries Putin building a Tsarist-like nostalgia regime of personal power. Christopher warns Russia has become nationalist, expansionist and reactionary posing a clear threat to its neighboring states.

Sadly Christopher passed away in 2011.

His brother Peter picks up the thread in mid-February 2022. This other Hitchens (a former foreign correspondent from Moscow in the early 1990s) delivered a stark warning just weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.

If Putin invaded Ukraine, he would establish beyond doubt that he is clinically insane. It would be a mad thing, do to Russia nothing but harm, and lead to his own overthrow.

The two Hitchens perhaps can be seen now as giving us similarly accurate predictive analysis of Putin’s danger and folly.