Posted on 07/21/2015 2:48:59 AM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
Asked about Russia’s intervention in Ukraine at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last month, President Vladimir V. Putin spoke bitterly of America and Europe. “They have pushed us back to the line beyond which we can’t retreat,” he said.
This was more than a political blame game. His answer revealed both a concerted anti-Western strategy, in which the West is seen as the enemy, and also a policy of brinkmanship. The implicit message was that if the West acted in a manner not to the Kremlin’s liking, that could prompt an ultimate response, maybe even a nuclear one.
In April, after speaking to people close to Mr. Putin, Graham Allison, director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Dimitri K. Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest, warned of a growing risk of nuclear war. But they offered a contrasting explanation.
“When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia was on its knees,” they wrote. “But since Vladimir Putin took over in 1999, he has led a recovery of Russia’s sense of itself as a great power.”
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For a decade, the rising price of oil provided soaring growth and veiled the inherent deficiency of the regime. In reality, Russia’s government is simply incompatible with the reforms needed for sustainable economic development, which demands liberalization and competitiveness.
When the petrodollar windfall dried up, that reality reasserted itself. Today, the nation is truly on its knees — beneath a leader who cannot be changed, and as hostage to the capricious price of oil and a gluttonous military-security complex. The fratricidal war in Ukraine, the impudence of the Chechen strongman Ramzan A. Kadyrov, a renewed isolation from the West and the Kremlin’s dependence on China as financier of last resort. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Bah. Not even close to Saddam Hussein.
The NYT just HATES Putin because he fights against gays in Russia ...
Of course. Invading sovereign nations has absolutely nothing to do with it . . . say, has Putin closed any gay bars in Moscow? You’d think RT would report it.
NYT hate Putin because he’s against Obama.
The NYT would be in ecstasy if it had Putin in charge. As would some FReepers, apparently.
The author isn’t an employee of the NYT. He isn’t an American; he is a former Russian foreign minister. I know that some people on this site think it’s wrong for Russians to want the same liberties that we have and that liberty leads to homosexuality. But it doesn’t. We can fight the gay mafia without feeling obligated to voice support for a tyrant.
+1
[Putin’s approval ratings hit 89 percent, the highest they’ve ever been.]
CNN:
“An opinion poll can only be conducted in a democracy with a free press,” he explained. “In a country with no free press, where people are arrested for expressing their opinions, where the truth is hidden from them, where the media even online is almost all controlled by the government — when a pollster phones people up and asks, ‘Hello, do you approve of Vladimir Putin,’ the answer is overwhelmingly yes.
“So what that opinion poll is, is not a poll of approval but it’s a poll of fear.”
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/europe/vladimir-putin-popularity/
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