Putin’s purposes an affront to his office, his people, and their future
Vladimir Putin was generally welcomed in the West as the president who would restore order and pursue reform when he replaced a tired and discredited Yeltsin in 2000. Few then sensed that he might instead lead the Russian people towards the tragedy that now hangs over them.
The Russian president’s determined pursuit of two interlocking political strands has betrayed his constitutional duties and his people’s interests: first, by the centralization of power into his hands and second by his obsession with what he sees as the right of Russia under his rule by threat and violence to restore it as a power treated as one parallel to that of the United States in the way it was during the Cold War.… Seguir leyendo »