I'm telling you right now I do not like my tax dollars going to the Iraq war so I do not support it.
Stop playing semantics and use some logic.
No you ain't.
Who said I was mad? I ain't mad, only annoyed at the clueless Ukraine shills who keep telling everyone how great they are by getting duped into giving money and saying Putin should be assassinated, as if they'd ever have the balls to do it themselves.
Sounds like you have a sad and shallow life if you're going to be waiting for one random guy on the internet to supposedly fail.
In all fairness, Russia was always messed up. When the Iron Curtain fell and the U.S.S.R crumbled, all Soviet states and satellites experienced a very brief moment of freedom and prosperity. Some of those states later leaned either into the future, like the Czech Republic, Slovakia (formerly Czechoslovakia), Poland etc., or into the past, like Russia or Belarus. After Yeltsin rapidly introduced a capitalist economy, it didn’t come without some sacrifices - economic freedom has a price. Large swathes of the population wanted quick solutions - that’s where Putin’s never-ending reign comes into play. I think the key failing in those states was picking political figures deeply entrenched in the previous system, people who were aiming at consolidating power rather than pushing for actual reform. I can’t help but wonder how Russia would’ve looked like if somebody else won the 2000 election. Putin was a bad egg from the start, but Russians were enamoured by the idea of a powerful state, in part because they missed the one that crumbled.
Although people were not considering Russia as a modern powerhouse. The sanctions and tighting control over civil pop. has destroyed any chance for real growth.
This is a pendulum swing. You need to fall down before you can get back up. Russia “got up” from the collapse of the U.S.S.R, but only partially. The system has changed, but not the people. It’s not just 20-40 year olds who miss the “good old days”, there’s plenty of old folks who feel displaced because the connections they used to have and the party membership they used to take advantage of no longer gave them benefits. Plenty of people who were displaced out of industries that used to be artificially propped up, heavy industry in particular. People who used to be wealthy and respectable got downgraded to the working class, and vice versa - people who used to be scorned for their “useless degrees” were elevated to higher levels of society. People who seized the opportunity to engage in private ventures in the 90’ties quickly raised to prominence, in a true “from rags to riches” fashion, and within only two, three decades. It was a time of turmoil in all post-Soviet states - I should know, I witnessed it. The business environment from the time when I was a child was very different than what it is now, and the same changes likely took place in Russia. The difference is that Poles leaned into them whereas Russians feared change - they wanted a powerful state of Russia and that’s what they got. The problem is that a state like that wears boots, ones that are always on the lookout for a neck to step on.
You seem to be pretty pro Russia from your posts.
No that is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician's_syllogism
Only criminals.
Was there ever any chance of that actually happening, though? Putin was literally willing to kill to manipulate people into voting for him. I imagine he wasn't the only morally bankrupt holdover that had been trained in covert ops by the KGB. The obvious first step for Russia should've been barring everybody with any involvement in the Soviet Union from running for office ever again.
