[RedWulf]

>I think Putin would rather be remembered as incompetent than be remembered as the weakling that you’re describing.

Are you just neo-con bot or what? Putin bad! Obama good! Hillary good, Trump bad! Am I doing it right?

[Tau Food]

No, I think that your theory about a strongman Obama pushing a weakling Putin around is ridiculous. The problem that you're running into is that a dictator like Putin must in the end accept responsibility for the economic and political outcomes that accompany his rule. You can't credibly cast Putin as a strongman who is being victimized by someone (in this case Obama) who you wish to cast as a relative weakling.

The better explanation is that Putin is just an incompetent dictator. He has had the power to diversify his country's economy, but he has been too shortsighted, too incompetent to recognize that necessity. Instead, he just convinced himself that the price of oil would never decline and could never collapse. Well, he was wrong and now he is ruling a country which (because of his incompetence) is sinking because of its total dependence on the price of oil. And, he has no power to prevent the collapse of that price.

But, he can still take off his shirt and pretend that he's a tough guy. And, he can still have his enemies murdered by his thugs. And, he can still provide missiles to drunken fools who can shoot down civilian aircraft full of innocent victims.

And, despite all of this manifest incompetence, there will still be screwballs who worship him.