this is exactly why I am skeptical of Russia-haters. How much has been ginned-up by our contemptible, biased media on behalf of the Clintons and the Deep-Staters behind her?
Yes, Putin is a traditional dictator, and his role, as he sees it, is to be the head mobster, making sure the oligarchs under him don’t get out of control.
Is Russia a threat to America? Is CNN combined with Obama/Clinton and a politically weaponized FBI a threat to America?
The Russian elites want to undermine the West at every turn. The problem is: they have a vested interest in keeping the corruption here *alive* because of all their money stored in bank accounts in the U.S. and in other Western countries.
But now that Trump has come in, the system they’ve relied on, and which has faithfully delivered for them is being shaken. (Or rather, the rules that should have been in place the whole time are suddenly being enforced.)
As for average (non-oligarch) Russian people aka (99.9 percent of their population) - the Kremlin propaganda media machine relies on American instability to distract Russians from their own.
The biggest threat to Putin is a stable, well-run, economically thriving America living up to our principles. Because we then only serve to expose the fraudulent, corrupt, decrepit nature of his own state of affairs . And the more his people become attuned to this this reality, the more the stirrings for change among the Russian populace crescendo.