Opinion of Vladimir Putin

[Lechasseur]

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.

[Lechasseur]

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.

[Lechasseur]

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.

[Lechasseur]

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.

This is a stupid take, even from a 'realist Christian nationalist perspective' - which Putin doesn't actually believe in by the way, he just uses it to gain sympathy from paleonationalists. To put it frankly, Russia under Putin is in the weakest state on the world stage it has been in literal centuries. Its economy is smaller than Italy's, its population is small and declining, and it relies completely on an export economy. It is bordered on east and west by powers which are hugely superior to it, militarily and economically - the EU and China. So what does he do in this situation? He deliberately antagonizes the West, suppresses political and economic freedom for personal material gain, and spends what little the country has on a conventional military to bully the few weaker neighbors he still has for cheap shots of domestic jingoism to prop up his leech of a government. Given Russia's position, this can only lead to them becoming either a failed state or a puppet of the Chinese.

He's the sort of HP who is so H that he can be used as a litmus test as to the Hness (or ignorance) of the person being asked.

This exactly.

I just love it when people say that Putin "makes Russia great " or "actually centrist in Russia " or "a good Christian ". Really? Care to tell that to the LGBTQ people who were murdered by his Chechen puppet in literal concentration camps? How about the journalists he murdered? And the political opponents he threw in jail under false charges? How about the thousands of Georgians and Ukrainians who died in his unnecessary wars to show how alpha he is?

I'd go as far as saying that calling Putin a FF because he "makes Russia greater" is as bad and illogical as calling pre-WW2 Hitler a FF for "improving Germany".

BTW, he's not "being mean to the LGBTQ community". That's a ridiculous way to frame it. He's actively and ruthlessly oppressing their most basic human rights, and freely lets his goons perform the beginning of a genocide on them. It's nice to sit on the perch of safe straightness and dismiss that as unimportant because "at least he's being a good Christian".

Isn't his government investigating what's going on in Chechnya? I agree what the Chechnyan Government is doing is disgusting and is a crime against humanity. Someone has to do something to stop it.