Putin seems to me to be an old school Russian ruler. There’s a saying that what’s important is not how things are the same, but how they are different. Putin is different than the system he came out of because he’s a nationalist, not a Marxist. When he made his statement about the fall of the USSR being the greatest disaster of he 20th century he was talking about 50 million Russians no longer being part of Russia, not lamenting the demise of Communism. Without the mission to spread Marxist revolution around the whole world Russia isn’t and won’t be the threat the USSR was.
Very well said.
Good points. He’ll never become a democracy lover, but a stable nationalist we can live with.