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OFF THE DEEP END?
From The Times here: Russia’s casual savagery is seared into its soul
Excerpt:
"A particularly cruel quality" to Russian troop behavior. And animalistic in nature.
The country has gone bonkers, which is why Putin - a thoroughly dishonest person - is running the country. He is thus able to start wars and convince soldiers that "rape" is a decent war-weapon.
Russia has gone off the deep-end. And wont be coming back for quite some time. It will likely be impossible for the country to assimilate the deep reduction in oil-bearing income from sales abroad. The country must inevitably flip into an absolute economic depression. And, without the oil-money, it will be difficult for Russia to finance its army and its penchant for annihilating wars.
The real victims are of course the Ukrainians who did nothing to deserve Putin's ravaging of their country - and I would add also those Russians who think their country deserves better than what it has today.
Meet Russia's oligarchs here: Meet Russia's Oligarchs
Wow .... !
From The Times here: Russia’s casual savagery is seared into its soul
Excerpt:
The absence of a historical reckoning with the evils of Stalinism has spawned a people who believe brutality works
It was all western propaganda that Russia was about to invade Ukraine. It was all western propaganda, once the invasion had begun, to call it an “invasion”. It was all western propaganda that the ebbing Russian tide revealed the summary killing and torture of civilians and looting.
Yet for all our “propaganda” no one has been more surprised than the West. “Terrible things happen in war”, of course. We have only to think of the family in Kabul obliterated last summer by an American drone strike because they had been mistaken for terrorists planning an attack on the airport. But even so there has been a particular quality to the behaviour of Russian troops in Ukraine.
"A particularly cruel quality" to Russian troop behavior. And animalistic in nature.
The country has gone bonkers, which is why Putin - a thoroughly dishonest person - is running the country. He is thus able to start wars and convince soldiers that "rape" is a decent war-weapon.
Russia has gone off the deep-end. And wont be coming back for quite some time. It will likely be impossible for the country to assimilate the deep reduction in oil-bearing income from sales abroad. The country must inevitably flip into an absolute economic depression. And, without the oil-money, it will be difficult for Russia to finance its army and its penchant for annihilating wars.
The real victims are of course the Ukrainians who did nothing to deserve Putin's ravaging of their country - and I would add also those Russians who think their country deserves better than what it has today.
Meet Russia's oligarchs here: Meet Russia's Oligarchs
Oligarchs, in the Russian context, are the ultrawealthy business elites with disproportionate political power. They emerged in two distinct waves.
The first group emerged out of the privatization of the 1990s, particularly the all-cash sales of the largest state-owned enterprises after 1995. This process was marred by significant corruption, culminating in the infamous “loans for shares” scheme, which transferred stakes in 12 large natural resource companies from the government to select tycoons in exchange for loans intended to shore up the federal budget.
The government intentionally defaulted on its loans, allowing its creditors – the oligarchs-to-be – to auction off the stakes in giant companies such as Yukos, Lukoil and Norilsk Nickel, typically to themselves. In essence, then-President Boris Yeltsin’s administration appeared to enrich a small group of tycoons by selling off the most valuable parts of the Soviet economy at a hefty discount.
After Putin came to power in 2000, he facilitated the second wave of oligarchs via state contracts. Private suppliers in many sectors such as infrastructure, defense and health care would overcharge the government at prices many times the market rate, offering kickbacks to the state officials involved. Thus, Putin enriched a new legion of oligarchs who owed their enormous fortunes to him.
Wow .... !