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Re: Ukraine [message #98012 is a reply to message #98010] Tue, 17 September 2024 10:25 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Wayne Parham is currently offline  Wayne Parham
Messages: 18786
Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)

I can remember very well when Putin was appointed Prime Minister by Yeltsin on New Year's Eve in 1999. I personally thought he was going to be a good leader. He seemed charismatic and energetic, and I kind of liked him for a few years.

But everyone I knew in the Russian community in Tulsa warned me that he would be terrible. I didn't really understand why. I still don't know how they knew he would be terrible so far back. But they were right.

In the early 1990s, Yeltsin had endured a pretty unstable government, especially in its parliament and with its connection to the military. There were some close calls, especially those in October 1993. But Russia had gone through a huge upheaval. Their instability was understandable - I don't see that it could have been any other way. Their whole problem was how to make the government transition more stable.

By the late 1990s, Yeltsin's hope in Putin was that he would control the novi-russki, and to make sure that those people and organizations that took over sectors in the public and private spheres would be responsible to the citizens and good for the nation. It was a little like the efforts in the USA to control organized crime by creating the FBI.

But instead of the Russian government reducing organized crime, it embraced it. Putin cultivated relationships with the novi-russki mobsters that were both potentially powerful and who showed loyalty to him. He arrested or killed those that weren't completely loyal. So over the couple decades that have passed since then, the Russian government became what it is today. That's why I call the Russian government a "bunch of mobsters with nukes."
 
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