That quote by Putin may not be true though. According to politifact.com: PolitiFact - Did Vladimir Putin call the breakup of the USSR 'the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century?' "Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century." Amazing what a little trickery with translation can do to the impressionable mind, no?
He called it a disaster. Let's not get too bogged down in details on that one. Putin is a Breshnevian Soviet wannabe, complete with his desires to control eastern Europe and his own stagnation that is being exposed in this conflict. "Greatest", "major", who cares. He wants to rebuild the old Soviet state. That's the point.
You do know that it was the BEATLES, Paul, John, Ringo and George that did in the commies! There is a documentary about it!
It was pure arrogance on Putin's part to think that Europe and the U.S. would sit idly by while Russia invaded Ukraine. He had a clear model for what could (and would) happen: Russia's unlawful invasion of Afghanistan. The U.S. supplied the mujahedin with modern weapons, Russia got its ass kicked, and the Soviet economy (and empire) collapsed. For someone who did not like the last collapse of the Soviet Empire, he certainly repeated the mistakes that caused it. And the U.S. is in a much stronger position economically and militarily than it was in the 1980's. The Russian military is possibly weaker than it was in the 1980's (weaker at the start of both wars, I mean). My greatest hope is that we do not get a gullible president like Bill Clinton in office to manage Russia's recovery after the coming collapse. Clinton turned over much of the recovery to George Soros, who already had businesses in Russia, and Soros mostly focused on enriching himself while he was in charge of the recovery. The one thing that did not occur to anyone in the administration is to weaken Russia's weapons manufacturing capabilities, which would have made Russia and the world a safer place.
Putin digs up a 400-year-old map that proves that Ukraine is not a real country. Only one problem: the nation of "Ukraine" is clearly labeled on the map. Doh! Putin claimed a 400-year-old map proved Ukraine isn't a real country, not noticing it has 'Ukraine' written on it
The west was also naive to assume Russians would embrace a western style democracy/economy, even to the extreme that there was talk of Russia joining NATO LOL. Those oligarchs were always there, even before the USSR collapsed. They got even richer after the fall. In addition to that, there is no way in hell that China wants a western leaning Russia on its doorstep (just as Russia does not want a western leaning Ukraine on it's front step either). Despots like that want to stamp all that freedom stuff out as they are afraid of it.
Don’t think our own M.I.C. would have allowed it. Even as we saw Putin’s Russia creeping all the way back towards totalitarianism, while W was staring into his soul and Hillary was offering a “reset” - I don’t think many had his regime going full Baghdad Bob level delusion. I guess we just weren’t paying attention, he’d had several previous indicators of being a butcher that the west looked the other way on (Chechnya, Syria), so it shouldn’t come as a compete surprise as to what sort of genocidal criminality he’s capable of. Only the military ineptitude comes as a surprise here.
Putin is completely lacking self-awareness as he criticizes other countries that impose their will on other countries and contribute to instability. I don't see how the U.S. M.I.C. would have the horsepower to "not allow" the destruction of Russia's weapons making capabilities, if that's what the president really wanted. Certainly, they could not stop Bill Clinton from cutting our military spending in half or more during the 1990's. As long as Russia continued to make and sell AK-47's, fighter jets, and other weapons, they were going to make the world a more dangerous place. This contributed to all of the minor conflicts we fought (or cleaned up after) in places like Africa. If African and Asian countries had a harder time getting their hands on those weapons, there would be fewer massacres during the last 30 years, and the world would be much more manageable.
I think the oligarches were autocrats in Russia before the USSR collapsed. They were in charge of production, maybe, but not fully in charge of the money like they were after the collapse. They were relatively well-paid as bureaucrats go, but not super-rich. I think I had read somewhere that under Boris Yeltsin, all citizens were given "shares" of various industries and given the opportunity to receive dividends, or to sell the shares. Almost all citizens, having no understanding of how a stock market arrangement worked and not trusting their own government, sold their shares immediately at a low price. The oligarches started buying up the shares when they weren't worth much, and became super wealthy as the stock price went up and they traded and consolidated shares within a particular industry.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/24/yevgeniy-prigozhin-war-backfired-revolution/ Res ipsa loquitor.
If this is true it would be really really surprising to me. What were they trying to accomplish? It couldn’t be to kill Putin, the west would drop them in a second. To make a point that they could? Again, what does that do if you don’t announce it? Reconnaissance? What could they possibly learn? Doesn’t make sense to me.
Yeah, but our support of the Mujahideen didn't exactly end up making us stronger, did it? See below set of photos: Pay close attention to the 4th picture, especially the guy on the right. Notice the symbol on his rifle's charging handle? That's the type of "hero" our media and many on this board are celebrating. And then there's this "hero", in this picture that was featured on the front page of CNN. With his celebration of the likes of Timothy McVeigh, you can see how this can blow back on us, right?
