Sanctions don't hurt government, they hurt human beings. If you want to destroy the government of a nation, endear the people to yourself.

Depends on the sanctions

I'm not even talking about torture but just basic questioning but whatever that's a dumb tangent to the discussion.

The bolded is a gross hyperbole. After the collapse of the Soviet Union Russia was an absolute disaster. Putin came in during the late 90 and objectively lifted the Russians standards of living, this isn't subjective propaganda but reality on the ground. It would be hard to prognosticate what Russia might of been under someone else but if we compare Russia pre-Putin during the 90s and Russia with Putin it's no surprise why so many people adore him.

Maybe he sacrificed the well being of the Russian people on some level but to pretend that he didn't lift Russia from a forgotten nation geopolitically to the big boys league is just being dishonest man. Can you name a single country that has challenged American hegemony more than Russia?

that country is decades away from our standards
one might go as far to say that a strong man like putin is needed there to keep the country from falling apart

i wouldnt blame the people for not using the opportunity after the soviet collapse though, before they could blink the oligarch class had already stolen like trillions worth of public property and firmly sat at the top

Good discourse, keep it up.



This post was edited by Ep0ch on Jul 31 2017 01:02pm

Putin fucked up too much with Ukraine & Troll factories, not to mention they close VPNs in 2018 like in China.

I agree

The only sanctions imposed by the U.S. that have worked in the past 30 years were with small central American nations 20-30 years ago. We have a zero percent success rate at using sanctions in an attempt to bully anyone else.

Sources?

Compare the prosperity levels in Russia now to the one 15 years ago. Putin picked up a country in chaos... it had no geopolitical influence, the economy was a disaster, there was no middle class, corruption was even more widespread than today and there was a much greater oligarchy problem, lots of pollution in major cities, outdated infrastructures, scarcity of cheap energy sources, huge social inequalities, a huge problem with separatist terrorism, etc. This has radically changed under Putin. Of course, they are still far behin in many of these areas (especially outside of the major cities), but there is no denying that the sandard of life has greatly improved for the average russian. Has nothing to do with NK's "progress".

Him being an authoritarian ruler that isn't too fond of western democracy is a different matter. I too would never vote for a guy like that, but then again I'm not russian. Russia has never experienced more freedom in the past than they do now... compare this to the USSR or the tsarist monarchy. Vostokslavs don't come from a democratc culture, but from a culture of authoritarian rulers; their political priorities and the way they see the world is different to our own.