Opinion of Vladimir Putin

[mvd10]

LOL at Westerners who probably like Gorby and Yeltsin. No; Freedom Fighter (R) for making Russia great again.

Beet, this is a joke right? Otherwise, this seems like trolling to me. Why would you admire someone making Russia great again (actually he is weakening it and making is sh**t*y again, but I digress) via using execrable means? Why would it seem good to you to have Russia be great again, given who you are?  When was Russia "great" in your view? During the Stalin era?

Would you say it was trolling if I said Gorbachev and Yeltsin were great? Are we only allowed to approve of Russian leaders who presided over dismantlement and economic depression, unemployment, suicide, drug addiction, and oligarchy? Torie, I am trying to look at this from the Russian perspective. When Putin came to power, Russia was on its knees. Now it has even our national security establishment on the run. Reagan and FDR did excretable things yet we consider them good leaders. I don't like him personally but I don't think his high approval ratings are made up.

Frankly on this Beet is absolutely right.

I guess he is in a way. I mean, Gorbachev's 1996 presidential run tells you enough about what the Russian people think about him. And let's not even begin about Yeltsin's record in the 1990s lol. But we can't really ignore the terrible things Putin has been doing, and I guess it's quite ironic for someone from the West to back Putin who's quite frankly really antagonistic towards transatlantic alliances. I'm not sure whether Putin will have been good for Russia in the long-term though. The Crimea stuff obviously was meant to distract people from a stagnating economy. It has worked out well so far, but Russia has some long-term economic problems and I wonder whether Putin can adress them. Not to mention the chaos there would be if Putin doesn't properly arrange his succession.

Also he is better than basically all the other idiots who could have potentially been president instead of him which also contributes to my rating that he is slight ff.

This is what I keep telling people. Putin and United Russia are for all intents and purposes the centrists in Russia. Westerners imagine that without Putin you'd have some liberal in power, but that type of politics has almost no support outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg; the alternatives to Putin there are the nationalists or the communists, thus I think it's pretty clear that Putin is the best option. My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is even Nalvany is a right wing nationalist.

Navalny isn't a progressive bleeding-heart liberal yeah. It makes him even better . But lol at the idea of the Liberal Democratic Party being in charge of Russia. That would make for some ... interesting times. I guess Putin is preferable to that. Still, Putin could make some steps towards a more liberal Russia and he could try to focus on implementing necessary reforms instead of focusing on useless nationalist dick measuring contests which will only harm Russia on the long term.

[mvd10]

LOL at Westerners who probably like Gorby and Yeltsin. No; Freedom Fighter (R) for making Russia great again.

Beet, this is a joke right? Otherwise, this seems like trolling to me. Why would you admire someone making Russia great again (actually he is weakening it and making is sh**t*y again, but I digress) via using execrable means? Why would it seem good to you to have Russia be great again, given who you are?  When was Russia "great" in your view? During the Stalin era?

Would you say it was trolling if I said Gorbachev and Yeltsin were great? Are we only allowed to approve of Russian leaders who presided over dismantlement and economic depression, unemployment, suicide, drug addiction, and oligarchy? Torie, I am trying to look at this from the Russian perspective. When Putin came to power, Russia was on its knees. Now it has even our national security establishment on the run. Reagan and FDR did excretable things yet we consider them good leaders. I don't like him personally but I don't think his high approval ratings are made up.

Frankly on this Beet is absolutely right.

I guess he is in a way. I mean, Gorbachev's 1996 presidential run tells you enough about what the Russian people think about him. And let's not even begin about Yeltsin's record in the 1990s lol. But we can't really ignore the terrible things Putin has been doing, and I guess it's quite ironic for someone from the West to back Putin who's quite frankly really antagonistic towards transatlantic alliances. I'm not sure whether Putin will have been good for Russia in the long-term though. The Crimea stuff obviously was meant to distract people from a stagnating economy. It has worked out well so far, but Russia has some long-term economic problems and I wonder whether Putin can adress them.

Well, there are several things Putin has done or is doing that I don't like (say Russia's influence in Moldova for example), but Russia under him has been in the best shape it's been in probably in its entire history. And for better or worse, I believe Putin is doing what he thinks is best for Russia; while Western leaders have not acted in their countries' best interests in decades. On top of that, while he could do it in a better way (say by not being mean to the LGBT community, as they're doing nothing wrong), he's one of the rare leaders of Christendom who's trying to reverse his country's moral and cultural decline, along with the decline of Christianity, which to the contrary in the West our elites are encouraging, aiding and abetting the decline in the West. So even if I don't like everything he's done, I respect Putin just for that, and will give him a "tilt ff" rating like Bagel did.

I'm not sure what you see as fighting moral and cultural decline but I'd argue things like the law decriminalizing domestic violence far outweigh that.