I would love to hear the thoughts of this leftist community, not least any comrade in Russia. In the US it's so hard to get any serious Russia news/analysis because of the propaganda here- you have red guys that love Russia & Putin to own the libs, and you have blue guys that hate Russia & Putin because it's their favorite boogeyman. I ask because I personally don't like Putin for his war on gayness (wake me up when we get to war of gayness) but I understand that countries in the US's crosshairs are those that make their history under the least self-selected circumstances. I was looking at some stats when this question came to mind:
UA
RU
So material conditions have definitely improved under Putin, which is a miracle considering the fall of the USSR and the disgrace of Yeltsin, which makes me think there are probably people out there who like Putin for rational reasons, besides owning the libs. I would love to hear your thoughts either way.
In the 90s, the west had Russia in their pocket, Putin was almost hand-picked by the west as the perfect successor to Yeltsin, but despite Putin's efforts at diplomacy, even trying to join NATO, the west constantly rejected him and treated Russia as a threat, systematically surrounding them with NATO countries, they had destroyed the Soviet Union, but Russia was still too independent for their liking, so even though Putin and the Russian people in general wanted to work with the west, the west refused to work with them. The west never trusted Russia because of their own personal dislike of countries outside of the "garden" of Western Europe and the casual racism and white supremacism that is the undercurrent of western society.
Aaahh ok, thanks. That's an important piece of info.