Yeah I guess, it does seem implausible they'd be able to fit it in with all the work they have fabricating pretexts to get their own countries involved with wars and invasions and regime change and assassinations.
If you want to continue down the rabbit hole of things pointing in the general direction of Putin being a crook, my favourite is the one about the apartment building bombings used to justify the Chechen war: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings
> On 13 September, just hours after the second explosion in Moscow, Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov of the Communist Party made an announcement, "I have just received a report. According to information from Rostov-on-Don, an apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk was blown up last night." When the Volgodonsk bombing happened on 16 September, Vladimir Zhirinovsky demanded the following day an explanation in the Duma, but Seleznyov turned his microphone off. Vladimir Zhirinovsky said in the Russian Duma: "Remember, Gennadiy Nikolaevich, how you told us that an apartment block has been blown up in Volgodonsk, three days prior to the blast? How should we interpret this? The State Duma knows that the apartment block was destroyed on Monday, and it has indeed been blown up on Thursday [same week]..."
Yeah when you get into it it becomes very clear that the corruption dates back to the very beginning and is deeply ingrained in the fabric of this circle of people that is in power. They are so cynical and they are covering up so many things, that they’re basically secure in the knowledge that it’s all too complicated for anyone to actually do anything about.
He is an actual evil person. He is interesting from that point of view. Sending soldiers into Ukraine, telling them they are fighting nazis and that people will welcome them with open arms...
About 10000 Russian casualties so far in this invasion. They have no training, no air support, no fuel, nothing. Putin is sending all these people to their deaths believing a lie that the Ukraine people are nazis, while he is playing bunker bitch at home, afraid to even sit next to people in his own staff.
I believe that to Putin “Nazi” ins interchangeable with “evil invaders”. And he sees that western leaning elements of Ukraine as Sauron like figures tempting Ukrainians from their rightful place as part of the Russian empire.
Not saying I agree, but that is the only coherent worldview I can from his speeches.
Is Putin a crook or a run-of-the-mill Russian leader? Most of leaders in Russia are like this. Navalny, for example, is ultranationalist who said Crimea and Donbas are 100 % Russian and "should be kept".
Navalny is an ultranationalist who run an overtly racist anti immigration campaign when he tried to become the mayor of Moscow.
He is a political prisoner however the west should really stop trying to set him up as some sort of savior.
The problem with Russia isn’t the politicians it’s the complete lack of any government institutions that facilitate even the slightest shred of collective decision making.
Russia now is more autocratic than the USSR ever was because the USSR at least had party politics and the massive bureaucratic machine that needed to be appeased.
Russia as a nation is utterly broken it’s far closer to North Korea than to say China.
And the worst thing is that I don’t see a way out for them and for us from all of this at all. Taking out Putin isn’t going to fix things it would be a bandaid at most.
> He is a political prisoner however the west should really stop trying to set him up as some sort of savior.
Is the West doing that? I’ve literally never seen anything from Western government or media saying anything positive about his platform/program, what he offers Russia, or anything, only that (1) he’s Putin’s most popular opponent, and (2) Putin tried to murder him, and then threw him in prison.
The West has set him up as a symbol of Putin’s authoritarianism (well, mostly Putin did that, but the West highlights it), not as a savior.
He was nominated for a bloody Nobel peace prize and was a serious candidate.
European leaders, the media and plenty of wanna be political analysts on the internet are definitely skewing his story completely.
To me he is just another asshole that isn’t Putin, and whilst I can agree that his experience in prison and everything that led up to that including being poisoned might have finally knocked some sense into him but based on his actual political career in Russia I wouldn’t want him in any position of power.
The problem is that I don’t see a way to fix Russia that doesn’t include a massive war and a post war Germany like situation.
This isn’t about its people on an individual level many if not most aren’t different than you or me.
Collectively as a nation at this point it’s beyond redemption simply because how utterly broken it is on every level.
The USSR at least was driven by an ideology based on a universal political/social theory good bad it doesn’t matter.
Today I have no idea what Russia stands for and that’s the most dangerous situation I can think off because it means that nothing is off the table.
Russia is a nation that has been failing upwards for 2 centuries and it managed to fail upwards to the point in which it has a nuclear arsenal large enough to obliterate human civilization as we know it.
> He was nominated for a bloody Nobel peace prize and was a serious candidate.
If you’ve heard of someone being a nominee was who didn't win, despite the 50-year non-disclosure rule, it's usually a fringe group with that disrespects the prize and the process and is desperate for attention, not a serious nominee or otherwise representative of the general view of the West.
Obama got the Nobel prize, and he proceeded to commit crimes against humanity - especially against some of the poorest and weakest people on the face of earth. It's a political award.
I don't think I understand how that has got anything to do with Navalny being nominated for it as proof that the West is "trying to set him up as some sort of savior".
that it has nothing to do with real achievements, but everything to do with politics and optics. I am not saying "west" wanted to award Navalny Nobel peace price, but if they did, it's understandable given the real politik.
I can highly recommend the TV series "Putin – A Russian Spy Story" for people interested in how Putin came to power and some of the "unanswered questions" along that way.
