Quote:
Originally Posted by MeoTwister5
Putin has the world by the balls now. He's essentially what every authoritarian on the planet dreams of becoming. One asks how the world let a man like him into power.
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The simple truth is that western democracies have been content with the status quo. While the USSR tried to export their (authoritarian) system of government to other countries, there was no real effort to export democracy to other countries. The west could have put pressure on Russia when Boris "buy me a drink" Yeltsin stormed the parliament with tanks and could have put pressure on Belarus to have free elections decades ago, just to mention two important inflection points.
Now we not only have authoritarian regimes all over the world, but autocracies led by "strong" (old) men. Don't be surprised if in the near future so called "allies of the west" suddenly align themselves with the Kremlin, like Turkey. Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the...=fiw&year=2022
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I didn't comment yesterday day expecting to wake up to wholesale carnage, but it seems the worst is yet to come. It is clear that putin wants a clean surgical operation, but it is clear to me that if the highly trained USA army could not pull it in Iraq, the russian conscript army will very soon start to shed civilian blood.
p.s. to me it is clear that putin thinks he can end the occupation in a couple of weeks, put a puppet government with ousted president in place and might even give back Crimea to Ukraine thinking everything will go back to normal. No doubt years of testosterone overdose has damaged his brain.