[Skybird]

There was a four-parts documentary about Putin on TV some days ago, from the Yeltzin era to the present. Good docu, I think, balanced, fair, objective. Confirmed more or less the way I use to see him.

And as I see him, he has chnaged from better to worse. The West treated russia quite underhanded after 89, drunk by the feeling of having won the cold war, and now partying as the victor. Trying to exploiit the economical wilderness that Russia was, abusing yeltzin'S weakness to shuffle heavy profits out of the country and leave a corrupted business strutcure behind, was no clever idea.

Putin I think in the beginning believed honstely that there would be a chance to bring Russia closer to Europe, in mutual ties formed on same eye level. He signalled by his political decisions he made that he wanted that and hoped for that, but of course he expected a return for his early concessions. And on that return, the West failed too often, breaking too many promises while just raising demands that Russia should just copy the Wetsern model. Putin learned that his hopes maybe were naive, and that western and american diplomacy speaks the same language of power and strength that the Soviet union spoke, and that a weak Russia accepting compromise after compromsie - amyn of them being foul compromises for russia - simply does not pay off.

He cleaned up the mess caused by the capitalistic hey-days of early Yeltzin'S era by confronting the established crminal oligarchs. Chodorkowski imo is no saint himself, and he became the example chosen by Outin to teach the ologarchs the lesson that they may enoy the millions they have, but if they start to mess with the state and try to corrupt government and take it over, they live dangerous. The logic is simple: if somebody corrupts somebody else then the state corrupts the economic leadership - not the other way around.

Putin became a hardliner that way. Which I see as not necessarily unavoidable from beginning on, and think of as a great historical opportunity being missed by the West. In the early years of last decade, he was decribed by some itnimate insiders of Russia as a second Alexander the Great who also tried to modenrise russia and bring it closer to europe. Alxander had some minor achcievements, but in general failed. So did Putin. And for both men it has not been completely just their own fault.

I have moved away from my tolerance for Putin in present years, but I also ask what the alternative would be? Priority to me is a stabile Russia, and I doubt that a confused concept of a dysfunctional generla democracy a la Western states could guarantee that. I think Putin also has chnaged by character. That may be partly due to bitterness over the disillusions he had to expreince, but also something in his personality that has chnaged with age, like we all chnage. Older men sometime sbecome - strange. And I cannot imagine the very educated, witty, smart guy he was 20 years ago to ever have accepted the infantile idiotic posing on mucho-macho-photos like he has repeatedly done now. That is so - doof.

I think it is not easy to govern a country like Russia and not loosing control. Maybe it is the most difficult country to govern and to control on the whole globe. what works inamerica or Germany, must not necessarily work there as well. I am even quite certain that it would not. Wide range thins out the density of pluralistic structures. Up until a point where the feeling of national identity and unity may have become so thin that it does not exist anymore.

And that I would see as a great danger for the world.