Putin´s Way (documentary) - Frontline

Datumet 24 februari 2022 kommer för alltid vara förknippat med dagen då Ryssland påbörjade sin invasion av Ukraina. Det många trodde var omöjligt i modern tid, ett stort krig inom Europa, hade påbörjats. Rysslands motivering till invasionen, att bland annat avnazifiera och avmilitärisera Ukraina, är ju så bedrövliga att de inte går att kommentera på något vettigt vis...

Varför gör Putin detta? 

Jag hittade en dokumentär gjord av Frontline Public Broadcasting Services (som verkar skapligt oberoende) som heter "Putin´s Way (full documentary)" - finns att se via Youtube - se länk. 

Jag tänkte summera some interesting statements from this documentary:

Putin has so many guilty secrets, so much money has been stolen, that he really doesn´t trust anybody to keep him safe if he steps down from power.

Instead of seeing Russia as a democracy in the process of failing, we need to see it as an authoritarian system in the process of succeeding.

There has always been corruption in Russia, but building it into such meticulous system was something only Mr Putin has managed to do.

Vladimir Putin started his career as KGB agent in Dresden - but in 1990 after the Soviet system was collapsing, he went back to St. Petersburg working for his former law professor that now had become mayor. 

Once and always KGB.
State is first - people are second.

In 1999, Boris Yeltsin was nearing the end of his presidency and looking for a saviour to protect him from massive corruption investigation. Yeltsin appointed Putin as prime minister.

Bombs obliterated four apartment buildings in Moscow. Hundreds died.
Putin says: "We´ll be chasing the terrorists everywhere... We´ll waste them in an outhouse. End of story".
Putin would point to rebels in Chechnya.  Putin uses this "trail" in order to justify a new invasion of Chechnya. He quickly became the most popular politician in Russia. The people who tried to investigate the apartment bombings in many cases ended up dead.

In 2000, Russia had a new president.
Putin seemed a modern man, a man for the future, a future all Russians hoped would be better than the past. His first act as president was to grant his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, immunity from prosecution.

In 2003, Putin summoned the county´s oligarchs to a meeting in the Kremlin. Under Yeltsin, they´d become billionaires. Under Putin, they hoped for even more business and new legitimacy. The richest of them all,  Mikhail Khodorkovsky, made a statement: "The scale of corruption in Russia is estimated by four different organizations at $30 billion a year. That is 10-12% of GDP. We should try to end this now." Khodorkovsky was arrested, his oil company dismantled and divided among Putin loyalists. Russia´s richest man would serve ten years in a Siberian prison camp.

Spag - money laundering company in Frankfurt.
Link between the Tambovskaya mafia in St. Petersburg and Mr Putin. And, to the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. After Schroeder retired, he got a new job: chairman of the Russian pipeline´s consortium.

Putin was trained in the KGB to deceive foreigners.
He has a very sharp eye for human weakness. He´s good at persuading people and at intimidating them, and he´s been doing this with Western leaders, sometimes with charm, sometimes with threats, but boy, does he do it!

Russian business entirely depends on protection.
You need protection. It is called having a roof.

In 2007: believed assets being under Putin´s personal control: $40 billion
(confirmed by the CIA in 2014)

In 2008 he swapped place with his hand-picked prime minister Dmitry Medvedev. Under the constitution, he would have to leave office for at least one term before he could run again.

In 2012, Putin moved Medvedev aside and took back the presidency in a Kremlin-controlled election. By now, the presidential term had been extended to two six-year terms. Vladimir Putin could remain in power until 2024.

Putin´s greatest fear is that the Russians will realize that his modernization project has failed. Two examples:
The median or the midpoint wealth for the average Russian is $871. Median wealth in India, over $1000. So the average Russian is poorer than the average Indian.
110 individuals own 35% of the wealth of Russia - they are the most unequal country by far in the world.

To distract from this, a very powerful tool he´s got is anti-Westernism. Blame the west for everything that is going wrong, and couple that with a very powerful propaganda machine where all the mass media is under Kremlin control, and he is in a very good position.

2014: Putin has invaded Crimea and redrawn the map of Ukraine, claiming he is protecting ethnic Russians.

"I haven´t seen any evidence that he is willing to back down, and it´s not his style at all, ever. "
He doesn´t back down. And when he feels that he is cornered, he is dangerous - he attacks.

Another interesting Youtube interview "Putin´s Road to War: