Russia, the new Saudi Arabia of motoring

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

Putin is undoing so much of the progress made in Russia over the last few decades. And he is leading the world into a new cold war. Their economy is going to tank, sanctions will increase and Putin is going to end up retaking some of the former Soviet Union territories. He is mentally ill, and dangerous.

Weirdly enough, Putin in his first two terms was probably responsible for a lot of that progress. Yeltsin, the first democratic leader of Russia, appears to have been (at least to those with at most a superficial understanding of the intricacies of Russian politics, like myself) a total disaster who basically "drank" the economy. Putin's first two terms appear to have helped to rescue Russia from the post-Yeltsin shambles, yet evidently he got drunk with power somewhere along the way and consequently used the comparitively liberal Medvedev as a "puppet President" until such a stage where he could regain his throne.

Perhaps it was his strengthened relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church, or maybe it was something else, but it does seem like Putin developed "notions" at some stage. And it's a shame, because if he retired from public life after his second term he'd probably be viewed worldwide as a (mostly) positive figure.