Thursday, July 19, 2018

What Putin Wants


Video by James Lindsay’s interview of Julia Ioffe, writer for the Atlantic, 2/15/18, cfr.org

Putin wants to stay in power and survive. He has seen citizen unrest from the urban white-collar groups in the cities who wanted Russia to become more like Europe. He has also seen unrest from the rural blue-collar group who are not earning enough to keep up with the cost of living.

Putin believes in stability and was disturbed by the Arab Spring and the destabilization and carnage it created. Putin is a “statist” and believes in a strong government. Yet he supported the privatization of commerce. He didn’t agree with the USSR giving up their satellite countries.

Putin doesn’t like Hillary Clinton because of her support for regime change and the Arab Spring and her role in publicizing the “Panama Papers” that exposed his seizure of $2 billion of Russian government funds for his own purposes. He was surprised that Trump won.


Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader


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