My first reaction — watching this drama unfold on CNN and then replayed over the past few days — was to wonder: Was this whole thing for real? I am not a conspiracy buff, but “Live and Let Die” had nothing on this Mutiny on the Moskva script...
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President Biden, please come onstage and take a bow. It was the broad and sustained coalition Biden assembled to confront Putin in Ukraine that ripped the facade off Putin’s Potemkin village.
Right again, and he had to convince Volo the Magnificent that the Russians were coming.
I like how Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat in the United States, described it in Haaretz this week: Biden understood from the start that Putin “is the epicenter of an anti-American, antidemocratic, fascist constellation that needs to be defeated, not negotiated with.”
That is a BRILLIANT take by Alon Pinkas. Throw Trumpie in with his butt buddy Putin, too!
Putin has long ruled with two instruments: fear and money, covered with a cloak of nationalism.
Insert Trump for Putin and it works perfectly (Bob Woodward's book on Trumpie: "Fear".)
If I were Prigozhin or one of his allies, I’d still stay away from anyone walking along a Belarusian sidewalk with an umbrella when the sun is shining.
Great line. And great advice!
All that said, we should be worried as much by the prospect of Putin’s defeat as by any victory.
Absolutely NOT! I HATE when columnists play that game! Play that line of thinking out: So should we help Putin?
In the near term, though, if Putin is ousted, we could well end up with someone worse.
So what should we do, Friedman, help Putin? Vet his successors for him?
You could also get disorder or civil war and the crackup of Russia into warlord/oligarch fiefs. As much as I detest Putin, I detest disorder even more,...
Well Thomas L., Uncle Alf sure brought order to Germany in the '30's! Run that one back?
How would you feel if Prigozhin had been in the Kremlin this morning, commanding Russia’s nuclear arsenal?
Guys (and gal-guys) who play this game ALWAYS go for the most extreme, impossible alternative as a debating point.
This is not a defense of Putin. It is an expression of rage at what he did to his country, making it into a ticking time bomb spread across 11 time zones. Putin has taken the whole world hostage.
I'm as pro-rage as Thomas L. Rage is a family value. THOUGHT, RATIONAL thought is better when making decisions.
If he wins, the Russian people lose. But if he loses and his successor is disorder, the whole world loses.
Okay, so although "This is not a defense of Putin", it is a...preference? BULLSHIT.
