Two items have been released recently that are worthwhile independent watches / reads regarding Putin and Russia but combine to make a few clear points about the dangers posed by Putin.
The Weakness of the Despot -- https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin
A interview by David Remnick published in The New Yorker on March 11, 2022 of Stephen Kotkin, a noted expert on Russian history in general and biographer of Josef Stalin.
Vladmir Putin - KGB Agent -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2_EFJLWA6o
A short video biography of Putin from his early days in the KGB up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was published on March 13, 2022 by Mark Felton, a noted YouTube creator whose predominate expertise is WWII and Nazi Germany. His material on YouTube easily matches or surpasses Frontline or BBC content in quality, making him a modern day William Shirer.
The key point made by Kotkin in his interview involves the combined cultural / economic / political trap that Russia has succumbed to for hundreds of years. Kotkin addresses an often asked question about any famous despot and his country -- does the man make the country or does the country make the man? Like Stalin, Kotin says Russia made Putin. As Kotlin first wrote about six years ago, Russia has believed for hundreds of years that it should be a great power - setting up societal expectations -- but its power has never matched those aspirations. Part of that failure stems from its otherness -- being of Eastern Orthodox tradition rather than being "Western" -- and part stems from lacking some of the natural resources that have proven useful in prior waves of economic / industrial advancement.
Over repeated cycles of history, Russia has attempted to offset this lack of economic power by focusing on military power as compensation. This approach can succeed for brief periods but requires shifting resources and support away from citizens. After enough time, shorting the citizens of basic needs requires active coercion through force and political processes that fixate on exaggerated or imagined external threats rather than actual internal problems.
This pattern has another unfortunate consequence. It continually recreates an environment where the citizens personalize the state into one leader -- a cult of personality. The combination of this pattern with the ongoing coercion required to redirect economic resources to military aims inevitably corrupts the entire economy as wealth is redirected away from public benefits to the control of a small number of people tied to the leader and military / police. That corruption then produces another long term problem. It starves the economy of resources required for growth so keeping up with foreign competitors whose economies ARE prospering requires ever more redirection of resources away from the stagnant economy and citizens which requires MORE corruption of MORE people -- a spiraling cycle that will never keep up with the more dynamic economic and political systems of the enemies.
The key takeaway from the Felton biography on Putin is that Putin has a track record dating back to the 1980s of fomenting dissent in foreign countries via supporting political extremist factions and seeding bogus stories to stir up distractions for leaders. In fact, Putin was selected in 1984 for a special on-boarding program by the KGB created by Yuri Andropov to teach these tactics to newly recruited KGB officers. A year later, he was assigned to a KGB office in Dresden, East Germany where it appears he provided guidance to an established group operating out of East Germany termed the Red Army Faction which was responsible for over two hundred forty eight terrorist bombings across Western Europe from 1970 to 1998. Sound familiar?
Putin also provided support for a East German neo-Nazi named Rainer Sonntag who created a neo-Nazi movement in East Germany that went on to support neo-Nazi / "skinhead" extremist groups in West Germany. Remember the West's collective sense of puzzlement when the neo-Nazi movement arose in Germany at that time? How could that arise with their recent history? It might be understandable that the IDEA of neo-Nazis came up but shouldn't German memories and ANY sense of shame have been sufficient to squelch it? Now we know. Sound familiar?
These are key insights into the dynamics of the current problem. Putin sits atop a pyramid of economic and military / police power largely of his own making that is so inherently corrupt it can never achieve its supposed long term goals (sustained worldwide Russian influence), there is no way to suddenly stop the train and get off without those at the top being killed or jailed and any effort aimed at stabilizing the unsustainable status quo only contributes to the eventual collapse. And the resume of the man at the top is 100% consistent with that of a paranoid, psychopathic murderer. With nuclear weapons.
WTH
