The Putin-lovers like Roger Koeppel

The Putin-lovers like Roger Koeppel fail to understand one thing: a crocodile will never become a vegetarian ... "
– Winston Churchill

Analysis and Historical Irony
The Core Paradox: The paradox rests on the absurd expectation of modern apologists who believe that the fundamental nature of an imperial aggressor can be altered through diplomatic compliance or intellectual justification. Projecting a moral or lifestyle choice ("vegetarian") onto a apex predator ("crocodile") brilliantly exposes the naivety of this worldview as a comical category mistake.

Historical Irony: Winston Churchill is the ultimate historical architect of dismantling appeasement through rhetoric. He famously noted that "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." By reactivating Churchill's crocodile metaphor within the context of 21st-century geopolitics, this lilliputin builds a direct bridge from the 1930s to contemporary times. It exposes today’s "understanders" (Versteher) as the modern-day equivalents of the old British establishment figures who genuinely believed expansionist dictators could be "tamed" with concessions.

The Deeper Level: The loboesque signature here lies in the brutal, biological reduction of high-minded political discourse. While journalists like Koeppel attempt to dress up geopolitical aggression in complex, seemingly rational arguments, Churchill shatters the illusion by reducing reality to the unyielding laws of nature: a crocodile does not renegotiate its place in the food chain. The supreme irony is that those who pride themselves on being "realists" are unmasked by history as the ultimate romantics—foolishly waiting for a predator to change its diet.