Quote:
Originally Posted by ikalugin
Interestingly enough you do not mention any credible, non marginal politicians. Liberals by 2000 (ie after 90s) and certainly by 2014 were not in that category. Unless you count in the battle with old guard oligarhs in the early years of the regime (which I have specifically cut out due to how those oligarhs have operated in the 90s) all you describe are journalists/activists being murdered (sadly this is reality - there is a degree of corruption going around and sometimes journalists die and that happens without Putin's intervention).
Interesting claim. Define "dangerous". Were the journalists that you have described dangerous to Putin (or his regime) rather than some people well below him in the order of things?
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It depends on what they were sniffing at, truth be told it might well not be Putin but those who run him that have ordered their silence.
The west is certainly not completely innocent of such matters, I recall an interesting case in the UK involving an unfortunate gentleman by the name of Dr David Kelly who committed suicide in 2003, likewise the curious incident of Gareth Williams, although that could have been a foreign intel agency who pulled that one off.
Honestly I respect Putin and his rather masterfully created image, and I can also respect him for bringing the oligarchs to heal after their attempts to run the country, although to be fair to them, considering that Yeltsin was President at that time, they were probably doing more work than he was. Putin cut through the corruption and brought Russia back as a power to be respected and feared on the world stage, I can respect that and I can see how to the average Russian that would make him a popular figure.
But there's other things that un-nerve me about Putins Russia, the laws regarding Homosexuality, for one thing, the corruption in the police force that is so often ignored or even encouraged in some areas by local officials, the way that freedom of speech can sometimes lead to a bad end...although, to be fair in that respect a similar thing can happen in the west, especially if you're the wrong ethnicity or religion.
It's those little things, that probably don't even effect the average Russian citizen in their daily lives, and as such would not cause them any real concern or reason to doubt Putins directions, but when you step back and look at the bigger picture, it's not a direction I like seeing Russia take.
I realise that Russia is not the west, and it takes a very particular type of government to run Russia in any organised form, in that respect I can understand Putin running for so long, he is doing no different to what his predecessors did, all the way back to the Tsars and beyond, but to try and call it a democracy is a bit like calling a wolf wearing sheeps fur a sheep. The Chinese communist government is probably more democratic in that manner, but I guess if Putin was to crown himself Tsar it would probably end with another mess in St. Petersburg and I'm really not so sure if the cannons on the Aurora still work...
