Good grief! I feel like I am living in a crazy dream; Putin, the KGB punk, has more moral authority than the US government.
I will say, I could be wrong on this. But this is how I see it:
I think Putin saw from the inside how decrepit the Soviet system was. He appreciated the prestige it had on the world stage, as an Imperial Russian, but he knew deep down it was rotten to the core.
Many have made hay of his statement of how the collapse of the Soviet Union was a tragedy.....In context, I look at it more at how the post-collapse was handled, and yes, there was much that could have been legitimately criticized about it, but he has also said many times, that he’s glad that the Soviet Union is no more, and he has no desires to bring it back. The Russian Communist Party hates his guts.
He wants a strong Russia, and I think there is a role, especially in keeping the Muslims in line in Central Asia. Better that than for them to be independent of Moscow. They sure seem to be better at keeping Muslims in line than we are.
In my opinion Russia is back to what it was before the Bolsheviks, an Imperial power, but the US and Russia had cordial relations back then, and I don’t see why it cannot be again.
But we did stupid things to poke Russia, like Kosovo. That made it very hard for the proud Russians to believe that the US wanted friendship with Russia.
He is an authoritarian, yes.....but that’s par for the course in Russia.