Barely. They were in the G8. Even after being kicked out trade kept going as normal, new pipelines were being built, nuclear power plants were being shut down because who needs a fallback?

Saudi Arabia gets full honors on the international stage, despite publicly executing people for criticizing the government or having independent thought, and cutting up a journalist in a consulate abroad.

Not too sure about that. We're pals-y with plenty of authoritarian states. Even in the late 2000s and early 2010s we were so desperate to include Russia, corruption and authoritarianism and all, in the international order.

Above everything, you can get in good with the current international order simply by not making trouble for other countries. Russia, apparently, couldn't abide by even that minor restriction.

As long as they kept it to murdering political rivals within the country they would have been fine.

Everybody still does business with PRC, Saudi Arabia, etc

And that would just be a step too far.

Eh. Through the history of the 90s, it looked like they might have a shot at establishing a free and stable democracy.

Then privatization and mishandled foreign aid created their oligarchs, quality of life fell through the floor in basically all the post-Soviet states, people got mad, tired, and scared, Putin stepped in to "stabilize the situation"— Then the politicians and journalists started dying, crazy siloviks and vatniks fully captured what was left of their political institutions I guess, and now they're doing a lot of evil murder and various interesting atrocities.

There might have been/probably were underlying cultural factors that made it impossible for Russia to ever stabilize as a "normal" country at that point. But those are hard to see from an outside perspective, and I guess they're probably pretty hard to see from inside as well.

i know few of them personally and generally those who live outside of Russia are against the regime and those who live inside Russia say they are not affected and are apolitical or that all countries to the west are controlled by US and want to steal Russian land + resources.

It's also funny to hear what they get to hear in tv aside from UK like that time they were told that in Europe it is so dry that people don't have water to drink or that people are freezing in winter because no RU gas

the majority of Russian people very strongly agree with the invasion, remember, Navalny might be the strongest opposition, but he was for even more radical reconquest of "Rightfully western Russian soil"

I run a, let's say.. "Social Club" on discord (Okay it's an Erotic Roleplay server) one of our regulars is Russian, I actually worry about him quite a bit. He wishes he could leave the country, he's very lucid of the entire situation.

(Edit: I said he was 18+ instead of Russian because I get confused and word association happens. Of course he's 18+. It's an erp server literally everyone is.)

It's worth reading the actual Times article that they ran with that cover.

https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760539,00.html

Führer of the German people, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Navy & Air Force, Chancellor of the Third Reich, Herr Hitler reaped on that day at Munich the harvest of an audacious, defiant, ruthless foreign policy he had pursued for five and a half years. He had torn the Treaty of Versailles to shreds. He had rearmed Germany to the teeth— or as close to the teeth as he was able. He had stolen Austria before the eyes of a horrified and apparently impotent world.

It's not complimentary. Time's Man of the Year is based on influence. It's not saying that influence is good.

That's different topic mate. 😅

Spain kept it going internally for decades.

Evil is uncontainable. If you accept bribe money, corruption will haunt your country.

There were a few years of hope of a genuine partnership after the wall fell. That hope remained but arguably became delusional once Putin took charge.