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It's Not NATO That Worries Putin
The issue of Ukraine joining NATO is a smokescreen. What keeps Putin awake at night is not the European or American military, it’s democratic ideas infecting Russia. It’s not missiles and tanks on his borders, it’s the thought of a democratic Ukraine...
www.dailykos.com
The issue of Ukraine joining NATO is a smokescreen. What keeps Putin awake at night is not the European or American military, it’s democratic ideas infecting Russia. It’s not missiles and tanks on his borders, it’s the thought of a democratic Ukraine and Belarus on Russia’s borders. It’s why Russian troops invaded Belarus when Putin’s autocratic stooge was threatened by democratic activists and mass demonstrations. Putin is the Capo of a kleptocracy that rules Russia with an iron fist and is making billions from having total control over the countries economy and resources. It’s as if a Mafia crime family took over a country. The biggest threat to Putin and his thugs is not an invasion from the West, it's from Russian citizens demanding democracy and an end to corruption. He needs a buffer of puppet autocrats that will keep liberal democratic values far away from Russians. Having former Soviet Republics becoming successful transparent democracies right on Russias doorstep is intolerable to Putin. Combine this with Putin’s determination to reclaim the Soviet and old Czarist empire's sphere of influence in Central Asia and Eastern Europe with himself as a modern Ivan the Terrible at its head and you realize it's not about Russian ‘security’ concerns. The security concerns Putin has are securing his criminal enterprise's grip on power and to keep the cash flowing into the oligarch's pockets.
For Putin, democratic ideas are more of a threat than the NATO military. Putin’s goal in Ukraine is to cause enough pressure and instability so that he can eventually do what he has done in Belarus and Chechnya. Have a puppet autocrat running the country and brutally suppressing any democratic activist or movements. He has no intention of stopping until he reaches his goals. The US and Europe are — just as in Soviet times — his ideological enemies. He is at war with the ideas of liberal democracy as they are fatal to his survival and are the biggest internal threat to his regime. He has worked to sabotage democracy in the US and Europe and he is determined to destroy it in Ukraine. Occupying the country would take a million troops and money he doesn’t have. I think his hope is to eventually bring about the fall of the current government and replace it with Russian stooges. Appeasing Putin won’t put a stop to his plan to make Ukraine a client state. He is a thug and a bully and sees the West as weak and easily intimidated. Biden I think has done well as is possible with a bad situation. NATO is reborn and Putin has supplied the needed boogeyman to bring the alliance together. I don’t think Putin thought that would happen. If the West can ensure that Ukrainian democracy can survive the coming Russian incursion and NATO is now back in action, that would be a really bad outcome for Putin.
Amen.
A crucial component of Putin's rapid rise to power.....
None Dare Call It a Conspiracy
From the GQ archives: Who was behind the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings that accelerated Vladimir Putin's rise to power?
www.gq.com