CNN has been running their front page “Quick Vote” poll this evening asking:
Do you expect a power struggle between Vladimir Putin and the new Russian president?
Don’t these people read any news? Is Christiane Amanpour the only person at the network with a clue?
At least it is nice to know that 68% of the people who clicked understand the situation.
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8 comments
I’m surprised they even bothered to ask. Considering that like the rest of the US MSM they think the majority of American’s are morons with no clue about anything.
I also wouldn’t be surprised to see the Repugs and right wingnuts generally using this in some way to prove some insane point or other.
Medvedev is the hand-picked candidate of Putin. He was pulled from obscurity for his total lack of political ambition. If there was a possibility of Dmitri not taking orders, he wouldn’t have been selected.
That’s like asking if Dick and Georgie argue.
Only if Dick thinks it’s a good idea.
Putin is a dangerous hardliner. He rose swiftly in the KGB and formed a power base that scares a lot of Russians. Many senior KGB officers reported serious misgivings when Putin first came to power (some of the more vocal ones have been very quiet ever since). Most of the West don’t really understand him and don’t know what his real plan is. He takes care of problems swiftly. The Russian people love the way he plays Bushmoron for a prize sucker (not a hard feat I know, but done in a way that seems to escape Bushmoron and his minders).
Give Russia another 10 years or so, and I suspect we may find out how tough and dangerous Putin is. 🙂
His base is St. Petersburg, rather than Moscow, so he was an outsider to the Kremlin players, and he has brought in a lot of people from St. Petersburg to fill important posts. He also spent a lot of time working with the wonderful lads from Stasi in East Germany. Gorbachev and then Yeltsin promoted him to counter-balance the Moscow crowd.
He still thinks and acts like a field supervisor and has no problem changing course and using whatever is available to do the job in front of him. He has no discernible plan of action to give anyone clues as to where he wants to go, and what he wants to do beyond holding on to power and control.
It’s going to be a very bumpy ride ahead as he is portraying an “action hero” at the moment.
Ohhh… I think he has a plan all right! What it is I am not sure, and perhaps it’s little more than an idea to him at this stage also. But idea’s can be very dangerous. I hear a lot… I have Russian friends still, and other friends here and there that tell me things. If I were still with DIO, I’d be telling my superiors “I think we have a problem”. I am good at reading threads and patterns. It’s what I was trained for. I predicted a lot of the crap that has happened in the USA over the past 8 years right after 9/11. LadyMin can confirm that. (And the fact that I’ve been a PITA about it!) 😀
So far, all the patterns I see involving Russia and Putin do not bode well for the future. A lot has to do with him consolidating his control in Russia is about the only thing I am sure of. He’s looking to prove himself, to get the people behind him. He’s an opportunist and will grab one as soon as he sees it. That makes him dangerous and unpredictable to a degree.Heck, I don’t even know if he truly believes in, or cares about, Russia! And that’s what bothers me the most. There is too much about him I don’t know. Bush & Cheney were very predictable. Putin certainly had no trouble reading them and playing them.
None of this is new. I blogged about Putin considerably at Loaded Mouth a few years ago. And I still don’t *know* much more than I did then. I suspect that he has more to do with some of the trouble going on in the World than most realise.
Oh well.. I guess time will tell! As always! LOL
By a plan, I mean an ultimate goal. What does he want to do with all of the power he is amassing? I think he is intelligent enough to understand that it is better to have influence over other countries, than to actually have to rule them, so he will probably use the energy resources to reward and punish countries around him until they fall into line.
The wild card is China. China has a lot of people and little land, while Russia has a declining population and lots of empty land right next door. China was the number one concern of the Soviet military for a very long time. If Putin can control China with energy resources, life might calm down, but China is changing, and no one knows what will emerge from the cocoon.