Quote:
Originally Posted by Osem
Trouble is his people like him and the more we detest him the more popular he seems to become. He's also doing what Kirchner (and many others) has done from time to time and that is stirring up dangerous nationalistic sentiment at home in order to deflect attention from other issues.
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I was speaking on facebook to the Russian girlfriend of a friend of mine. She was saying the Russians don't understand why we westerners have a problem with him.
She was saying that there have been a lot of problems in Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and he has done a lot to solve them.
The trouble is Hitler was apparently viewed the same way by Germans. They had massive problems. He came in, apparently solved the problems and they loved him for it. The fact he was a genocidal maniac appeared to be beside the point.
I think the problems in Russia have been caused by a combination of organised crime and large corporations. Putin may well have been part of the problem as he owns several large corporations.
The thing that concerns me with Putin is that people form an opinion based on what they see, hear and read in the media. Putin owns a staggering amount of media. He may be using that media to control people's opinions. Russia Today is made by one of Putin's corporations and is sometimes held up as being independent from government control, as they've famously critcised putin in the past, but they've only critcised him a couple of times, and actually seem to fall into line with Putin's view generally.
Then there was the farce that was the Winter Olympics which, I am sorry to say, appeared only to have been staged to ensure mega profits for the Russian companies involved.