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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Volodya: The US is parking missiles on the porch of our house |
| 2021-12-23 |
This is the press conference, all four hours of it, translated from Russian |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #8 Musta been Napoleon. My bad. |
| Posted by: badanov 2021-12-23 14:37 |
| #7 "I know he's a good general, but is he lucky?" ― Napoleon Bonaparte Let's see, invade and annex (back) the Crimea, bite a chunk of Georgia, use |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2021-12-23 13:17 |
| #6 "If you are strong, appear weak. But if you are weak, appear strong.” Putin is a master of this Sun Tzu precept. Whereas our moronic leaders have mastered the art of lying to ourselves: telling themselves and their countrymen that we are strong when we're weak, and destroying the greatest strengths this country had: its loyal patriots and its splendid isolation from the world's tarbabies. |
| Posted by: Merrick Ferret 2021-12-23 13:01 |
| #5 Putin's a worthless Soviet thug who lucked into power and stayed there by murdering anyone who challenged him. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2021-12-23 12:39 |
| #4 ^^^ I think this is a very good analysis. The only thing I would add is that Putin has been fortunate in having some very weak and incompetent adversaries (Obama, Merkel, Biden, et al.) I think it was either Frederick the Great or Sun Tsu who said a skilled commander cannot rely on skill alone. He must have luck as well. |
| Posted by: badanov 2021-12-23 11:23 |
| #3 ^^^ I think this is a very good analysis. The only thing I would add is that Putin has been fortunate in having some very weak and incompetent adversaries (Obama, Merkel, Biden, et al.) |
| Posted by: Tom 2021-12-23 10:52 |
| #2 Nicholas II was an incompetent dunce hated by his own people -- including his own aristocrats. He took a powerful great country with a growing economy and a government led by talented, brilliant ministers such as Witte -- and trashed it. Putin for all his flaws, and there are many, took a country that was in a complete shambles and restored it to a semblance of order, dignity and respect -- self-respect and the respect of the great powers. He crushed the Chechen rebellion and has at least halted NATO's surreal attempts to expand into the Caucasus and within a few hundred miles of Moscow, on Russia's southern flank. Pensions are paid and the fertility rate for White Russians, which collapsed during the initial post-Soviet era, turned around and is growing to the point where the Russian fertility rate now exceeds that of white Americans. Hate Putin all you like -- I'm not a fan -- but he is undeniably the anti-Nicholas II. That monster was hated by his people. The Soviet leaders were feared or scorned. The Russians know Putin's a bandit but they accept and overwhelmingly support him because they know that the alternative -- decay, decline, weakness and of course corruption regardless who's in charge -- the alternative to Putin is even worse. |
| Posted by: Merrick Ferret 2021-12-23 09:16 |
| #1 Worth noting that if Putin remains president of Russia to 2024, he will have been leader of Russia longer than Czar Nicholas II. |
| Posted by: badanov 2021-12-23 09:02 |