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What is Putin's End-game?
Background
FF#6
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
(born 1952 in Leningrad)
Studied law at Leningrad State University, under Anatoly Sobchak, later one of the leading reform politicians of the perestroika period
Early career
served 15 years as a foreign intelligence officer for the KGB - the last six years in Dresden, East Germany
“retired” from the KGB in 1990 and became an adviser to Sobchak, the first democratically elected mayor of St. Petersburg
by 1994 he was first deputy mayor
post-USSR
Putin joined Yeltsin’s presidential staff in 1996 – Yeltsin made him director of the Federal Security Service (FSB; the KGB’s domestic successor) in 1998; shortly thereafter he became Secretary of the Security Council
Yeltsin appointed Putin prime minister in 1999, then resigned at the end of the year and made Putin acting president
Putin easily won the March 2000 election with 53.4% of the vote
The first constitution (1991) was drafted in the Western mold with the help of young Harvard University grads. One-party rule becomes multi-party rule - more than 100 of them at one point.
Western businessmen saw the chance to make a lot of money by restructuring the economy - the US dollar becomes the preferred currency.The Soviet command economy becomes a market economy flooded with American goods.
Russia went from being a nuclear superpower to a cultural and geopolitical wasteland. Their former allies joined NATO and Russia came to be seen as ta place to be mocked rather than feared
From information police to a totally free press
Russian life in the 1990's
A Republican Senator in the US referred to it as “China’s gas station.”
NATO bombed Eastern Europe despite Moscow’s protest. Then the Bush administration supported democratic uprisings in the former Soviet republics and the US military moved into the Middle East and toppled the governments of Iraq, Egypt & Libya
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, moved from Russia to the US and called Russia “Nigeria with snow.”
Turns out Westernization is nothing more than an imposition of a foreign system of government ill-suited to Russia’s traditions and historical insistence on greatness, unity, and the subservience of the individual to a strong, centralized state.
- wars in Chechnya (2000 - )
- human rights abuses
- war in Georgia (2008)
- the annexation of Crimea (2104)
- military intervention in Syria (2015)
- Tighter alliance with China (SCO)
- Iranian alliance (nukes?)
- cyber-warfare and social media trolling/attacks
- multiple assassinations of vocal dissenters
- interference in US election (2016 - )
- breaking the INF Treaty with the hypersonic missile
Russia's response in the 2000's
And in 2020?
Global power...
Forever power...
?
Throughout the 20th century, we have seen how one global event leads to... or at least links to... the next.