Am I the only person that sees Putin as a leader trying to control and protect his 12 time zone country with a population of about 135M? He turned Russia around and we are trying to portray him as one of the old communists? Russia is vast and has an overabundant wealth of resources. Who are the ones who want him gone the most? I see lots of outside speculators and tons of money to be made if they can remove Putin. Like it or not, Russia may not be #1, but it can come close. Putin is Russia’s Trump, and disliked for the same reasons, he wants to protect his nation and the people.(including the Russians stuck in the Ukraine Dumbas sp.?area.) When Democrats seek to control, you can bet it will get us in a war. AGAIN! They need an enemy for us to fear whether or not they are a real enemy. I see Trump and Putin across a table talking it out, more than any Democrat doing it, without being vindictive, and with a superiority complex. Sadly at 85 I can’t do $#!t anymore to change it.
He turned it around all right. In year 2000 it was a least drifting toward a country with Rule of Law. Since then Putin has cancelled everything to do with law, and turned it from a managed oligarchy into and outright kleptocracy, with himself as the First Kleptocrat.
You gotta give him credit, he's a charismatic dictator, but then so were Hitler and Stalin.
Stalin, by the way, is experiencing a rebirth in popularity, thanks to Putin Propaganda on the state TV networks. Alonf with Felix Dzerzhinsky, the Bolshevik founder of the dreaded Cheka, manager of the Red Terror, murderer of a million Cossacks.
No, Putin hasn't turned away from the policies of the Soviet Union. In fact he's deliberately making those days into a romantic battle of Russia vs. the Jews, Russia vs. the West, Russia vs. everybody.
"History is revised so often, it's impossible to know what happened yesterday" Old Soviet joke