And it would appear that Ukrainians are going to keep it buried. They might have been somewhat skeptical about the Kremlin sending in their crack team of Red Dawn reenactors last year because of things like this:
"First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century"
-V.V. Putin, 2005
Yes, I know the neocons and MSM love to take that quote out of context as you did and use it as “proof” that Putin is a commie and “wants to bring back communism”.
In context: “First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” Putin said. “As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory. The epidemic of collapse has spilled over to Russia itself.”
Putin had been decrying alleged discrimination against ethnic Russians in former Soviet republics, mainly the Baltics, so this is more of the same. Now you might disagree with this, or think he carries on too much about that, but it is what it is.
He likely also meant the new unipolar world, where we emerged as sole hegemon (for awhile, stupidly squandered and gone now, but in 2005 we were still King Daddy of the planet). While we billed ourselves as a benign hegemon out to enforce a “rules-based order”, we didn’t follow our own rules in places like former Yugoslavia, Libya, etc. And we ran around doing regime changes and Arab Springs and shoving lefty woke nonsense down the throats of other cultures. So a number of other countries didn’t exactly see us as benign.
Anyone who has done even a cursory study of Putin knows he hates communism.
From an article hardly sympathetic to Putin:
“Yet all of Putin’s other actions and values scream a hatred of communism—both the idea and the way it was implemented. Indeed, they suggest that he in fact worships capitalism.
Take, for starters, the laws adopted during Putin’s presidency.
When at the dawn of his presidency Putin achieved passage of the natural resource extraction tax through extensive lobbying efforts, the public applauded this populist move. The hydrocarbon profits, it seemed, would now flow back to the people.
It soon turned out, however, that the “superprofits” flowed in a different direction. Rather than helping to finance rural gas infrastructure projects and secure access to the sewage system, improve health care, and increase social benefits, part of the new hydrocarbon cash got stashed away in the Stabilization Fund. Other parts ended up as dividends and payments to Putin’s friends and the managers of their companies. Still others were used to strengthen the repressive state apparatus protecting the mobsters.”
Link: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/putins-fixers
See also:
Again, I am not defending Putin. Again, I hardly consider him Mr. Nice Guy. I am no fan. But one can criticize him for a long list of very real things. No need to make stuff up and c!aim he’s a die-hard commie.