Posted on 05/28/2007 2:00:00 AM PDT by RusIvan
Two days after the Crown Prosecution Service announced that Andrei Lugovoi, the former KGB agent, should be charged with the murder of his old colleague Alexan-der Litvinenko and demanded that Russia extradite him to face trial in Britain, I bumped into a Russian friend: worldly, pro-western and a fluent English speaker who has travelled dozens of times abroad.
I asked him who he thought had ordered the murder of Litvinenko, a fierce Kremlin critic who died of a massive polonium210 dose in London six months ago. My friend had no doubts. “Boris Berezovsky of course,” he said forcefully. It was the exiled oligarch and foe of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, who had smuggled polonium into Britain and ordered his protégé’s death. Why? To sully Russia’s image in the West.
However absurd that seems, many Russians would agree. Even in exile Berezovsky, once one of Moscow’s most powerful political players, is regarded as a Machiavellian figure whose influence, they believe, knows no boundaries. Those who do not share that view, including Litvinenko’s first wife, believe he was instead killed by the CIA or MI5, enemies of Russia bent on weakening it just as it is becoming strong again. Few here suspect the FSB, as the KGB is now known, or the Kremlin. Too small a fish for them to get involved, they argue.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
The RUSSIANS are building an AK-47 Kalashnikov Assault Rifle
factory in Venezuela to give armament support to Communist Rebel groups throughout the Americas.==
Accualy they build the AK-103 factory. AK-47 is long gone. And they pay Russia US dollars. It is the major WHY.
Who cares whether he is Jefferson or Washington?
To Russians, Putin is highly respect as he has restored stability to the country, put the economy on a high growth path with improved living standards and restored a degree of respect to the nations image after years of looting under Yeltsin. As for being facist, it is just a exaggerated ridiculous allegation, Putin would still win in a landslide under a free and fair elections.
I don’t believe in Berezovsky;’s fairy tales. Too bad that you do.
I'm not defending the Iron Curtain or communism, but its existence was not a one way street.
Not really. Soviet mentality still rules virtually all the FSU.
However, Yeltsin never rose, mentally, above the level of a mid level apparatchik. He also faced a virtual war against communists who continued to control the Duma. Communists whose motto was, and remains "the worse for you, the better for us". Yes, Yeltsin made mistakes. But given the opposition he faced, I don't think many politicians could have been successful in those tumultuous times. I also think Western advisors, such as Jeffrey Sachs, and the "shock therapy" imposed on Russia on the advise of idiots like Gaidar, Yavlinsky and of course, the IMF, didn't help matters much.
The point Putin was making was not about a nostalgia for the USSR, but of the calamity of the Soviet collapse.
The health care system collapsed. TB and cholera, virtually unknown in Soviet times, made major comebacks. AIDS exploded.
Old women were found murdered on the street, their apartments stolen by mafiosi. Others, unable to live on pensions, begged on the streets. Physicians, teachers, and factory workers worked but were unpaid for months, in some regions, years. Girls were sold into prostitution across the world (which is still occurring). Babies were sold for adoption without parents' consent, and child pornography exploded.
Education, particularly at the primary and secondary levels, which was always superior from a technical perspective, deteriorated.
The former nomenklatura stole state assets, and moved their billions offshore, where it could not aid the average person; No government income to pay state salaries or maintain infrastructure, healthcare, or schooling.
Ukraine became, and remains, a major sex tour destination for Western men.
Now, having lived in the Soviet Union, I am no apologist for communism. But these massive social upheavals, many instigated or aided by the commies who still controlled the Duma, had a significant deleterious effect on the Russian (and other FSU republic) population. On the peoples' healths, their psyches, their lives. And many of these social problems did not exist in the USSR. That was Putin's point; There was a different, more humane way to implement change.
Oops - “advice”, not “advise”
Try not and place your worldview onto others.
This coming from a guy who supports a country that is giving Bosnia and Albania to Muslims. LOL
You would fit in on the Nashi websites, Putin lap dog.
Sure thing, Jihadi-enabler.
The history of the world shows that dictators do impose a view on others.
That’s true. And some prefer that....the term is “enlightened despotism”.
The Jihadi-enabler (Putin) is your hero.
“I’m not defending the Iron Curtain or communism, but its existence was not a one way street.”
Yes, you are with your moral equivalence. Compare the prosperity and freedom enjoyed by Western Europe as a result of American influence compared to those in Eastern Europe. The Soviets could have made the same choices, but didn’t.
“It must be admitted that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” Mr. Putin said in his annual state of the nation address to Parliament on Monday.
Please defend statement.
How can the collapse of the Soviet Union be compared to the tragedies of WWI and WWII and their aftermath with over 100 million people killed by Communists and Fascists such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Tojo and Hitler. It was only the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century for the Soviets in power. Mr. Putin clearly has no sense of history or perspective beyond his own narrow interests.
Like Napoleon maybe? Socialism is evil whether it is national or international.
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