TANK LIVE FIRE IN GEORGIA: The country, not the state.
RELATED: Ten years ago Putin launched a tsar-war against Georgia. Two columns I wrote at the time provide historical background, there first dated August 13, 2008 and the second dated August 26, 2008.
From the second column:
Personalizing Russia 2008 as Vladimir Putin strikes me as a stretch. Putin runs an oligarchy, not a totalitarian dictatorship, but Putin is clearly at the nucleus of the oligarchy, with ex-KGB pals, friendly billionaires and useful mafiya in close orbits. But dub the pals and billionaires “new royalty,”and Putin might be an emerging “pop Tsar” — a savvy 21st century autocrat leveraging Russian nationalist demands. Orchestrating a domestically popular military ventures fits this frame.
But recall in 2008 the Obama-Clinton Democrats and their media cronies blamed George W. Bush for lousy U.S.-Russia relations. And in 2009 Obama and Hillary “reset” U.S.-Russia relations. How? From September 22, 2009: by giving Putin a “sphere of influence” and cashing in missile defenses in Eastern Europe.
Seizing Crimea in 2014 — on Obama’s watch– was initially a “domestically popular” military venture in Russia.
Obama, Clinton, Clapper, Brennan, Lynch, Comey, McCabe, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN — they want you to forget this sorry history.
h/t AB