Are you sure it is just Obama trying to pressure Russia into war. What about Trump’s reaction to Putin’s statement about enhancing his nuclear capability? This is explained/discussed in the two articles below, and here is a quote from the second article: Sweeping aside efforts by his aides to temper his comments, or to suggest that he was merely talking about curbing the spread of nuclear technology, especially to terrorists, Mr. Trump told a talk-show host, Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
It sounds like he may be planning to go Reagan—force them to outspend themselves. With Putin approval over 75% and a drop in unemployment from 13% since Yeltsin down to 6%, useless spending on nuclear armaments could damage the Russian economy and raise unemployment and disapproval of Putin. It probably won’t help ours either, but we have further to fall.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/22/world/americas/trump-nuclear-tweet.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/us/politics/trump-nuclear-arms-race-russia-united-states.html
RA - If I remember correctly, the Polish crash killed most of the top Polish politicians. Very suspicious at that time.
The Russian economy is a typical third world economy heavily dependent on raw materials.
Exports from Russia amounted to US$331.5 billion in 2015, down by -35.5% since 2011 and behind -33% from 2014 to 2015. Russia's top 10 exports accounted for 70.3% of the overall value of its global shipments.
http://www.worldstopexports.com/russias-top-10-exports/2350/
If electric cars would increase the demand for gasoline would go down together with the price of oil, and the economy of Russia would shrink even faster.
I am not sure that Putin is updated on this, if he was he should have chosen another strategy for Russia with cooperation with his neighbors and the West. But Russia is a kleprocracy http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/12/18/how-he-and-his-cronies-stole-russia/ so it is difficult to reform the country
putin and trump are just fine with each others comments.
obama is an islamic terrorist war monger, who hates white nations, that are largely Christian... like the USA was and Russia now is.
It is probably must me being overly sensitive, but you sound like a liberal democrat...