Yesterday we became witnesses to the result of the adventurist behavior of the military flunkies of two autocrats, which has already brought grief to the families of two of our military servicemen.

One side gave the order to continue to attack the Turkmens (who are fighting ISIS and Assad) on the northern border of Syria — in spite of repeated diplomatic demarches from the Turks.  The other side simply gave the command to bring down a plane that was not posing a threat to Turkey.

The factual reason for the behavior of our military bureaucrats is Putin’s desire to prove his right to not pay attention to the position of contiguous states and to speak only with the USA.

The factual reason for the behavior of the Turks is Erdoğan’s desire to demonstrate “protection of fellow nationals” — as he regards the Turkmens residing on the territory of Syria.

The fundamental problem with these people, who have built similar regimes:  for both the one and the other human life is of less value than the “greatness of the state” and their own ambitions.

Everything — from the failed demographic policy, an approach to the education and health care systems that would be unthinkable in developed countries, to the redeployment of the limited resources of the budget into “megaprojects” and the special services — is the result of such a set of priorities.

At the top of the list — personal ambitions and the interests of the throng of bureaucrats.  People, their needs and even their lives — they are secondary.

Unfortunately, judging from yesterday’s reaction, such a position finds its supporters among pseudo-patriots — given the chance, they would gladly get mired in a new Russo-Turkish war, with thousands upon thousands of lives lost.

Once again it is pseudo-greatness front and center, not concrete living people.

Changing this cannibalistic paradigm becomes a key issue for the survival of our society.

And what about Erdoğan’s Turkey?  It has got to understand that a leader’s ambitions may carry a high cost.  But Turkey needs to be made to understand this not at the expense of ordinary Russian citizens, but at the expense of Putin’s friends, whose interests lie in the sphere of construction (it is specifically in their “megaprojects” that our budget money gets reprocessed into Turkish incomes).  And perhaps they too might yet understand something at the same time.