Russia was a prominent nation in the 20th Century, emerging from WWII a powerhouse. It was forced to ramp up its war production to fight the Nazis for mere survival, and with USA help through Lend Lease, they survived. But when the USSR collapsed in 1991, that was the end. The USSR transitioned into a 3rd world nation in many respects.
And virtually every aspect of life in today's Russia is based on fraud or corruption. People can literally buy a university degree by paying off professors along the way for what amounts to pennies. I know Russians here in the USA that did just that. I know one woman with an engineering degree, and she could not build a house with Legos she is so stupid. But she came from a family that had the money for her to buy here way through school.
The whole of Russia is that way. And since they have emerged from being a communist society, hard work is not part of their ethic. People got paid in jobs and did little to nothing. Being productive is not part of their ethic. That in part is why capital flowed into Russia at a slow rate. Who wants to invest in a nation of people with no work ethic? No one!!!
Putin thinks the Russia of today is no different than the Russia of 1945. In fact, with the corruption, the rot of this nation is pervasive through the whole culture. People even today still do not have freedom of thought. Say the wrong thing, you end up with a bullet in your head in your own flat.
Putin looked at history and said to himself, I can do what Hitler did. If I want to reunite what was once the former USSR, I can do that. Mind you, no one has stood up to this tyrant in 25 years. And with the weakest POTUS in USA history, Joe Biden, the time was right to launch his reunification campaign. Biden was dead from the neck up, and Putin did not understand the USA, not at all. He thought with a few shots fired, he would recreate the USSR.
And that idea is his legacy. He will go down in history as a failed Adolph Hitler clone. Hitler took Poland in two weeks. Putin thought he would do the same in Ukraine. Yet, here we are, 4th year of the war, and Russia now has over 1,000,000 casualties, and the numbers remain high of Russian casualties. With the help of the USA and NATO nations, the tide has turned on this war. Ukraine is winning the ground war, and is now leveling Russia. And it will continue to get worse for Russia with each passing year.
This only ends when someone near Putin puts a bullet into him, or poisons him. But one blinks wrong in Russia, and they are disappeared. So, the list is not long of anyone willing to risk their life to end Putin. And his paranoia is sufficiently high to put distance between him and almost all around him. In meetings, he usually sits at a great distance from those in Russia he meets with. No one can close on him, and ram the temple of a pair of glasses through his eye or neck, like in one of the Godfather movies. That is not happening.
I hate to say it, but we may be faced with waiting for him to die naturally, which might take 20 years. And in that time, he will remain a monster. It will take the general population starving to death, as what happened in Egypt a few years ago, to overthrow Putin. So, the time has come to end all trade with Russia in terms of food from countries outside of Russia. And I say the USA needs to start pressuring China to reign in their aid to Russia.
And if Europe was smart, they would end all trade with Russia. Would China still support Russia if they had to pay a global tariff to fund the war? I don't think so.
