comments:
Interesting that instead of refuting with facts you jump straight to bullshit. This is who Putin was in 2005. 1999 Killed over 300 Russian civilians as a pretext to launch the Second Chechen War. FSB agents were caught planting military explosives in an apartment basement, which the Kremlin covered up as a "sugar training exercise." 2000–2001: Almost immediately upon taking office, Putin used state forces to seize television networks that criticized his war or satirized his leadership, effectively ending independent national media. 2003–2004: jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky, for funding opposition parties, signaling that political dissent meant prison. Following a 2004 terror attack, he used the crisis to abolish democratic election of regional governors. Whistleblowers who exposed these early actions—like journalists Yuri Shchekochikhin and Anna Politkovskaya, politician Sergei Yushenkov, and ex-FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko—were poisoned or shot dead. Others, like human rights lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin, were thrown into prison camps just days before they could present evidence of FSB bomb complicity in a courtroom. Here are actual dated public comments to congress about what suspicions people had about Putin befor Kraft was suckered into giving him his superbowl ring like a dumbfuck. John McCain (2003) "A creeping coup against the forces of democracy and market capitalism in Russia is threatening the foundation of the U.S.-Russia relationship and raising the specter of a new era of cold peace between Washington and Moscow. It presents a fundamental challenge to American interests across Eurasia." https://www.aei.org/research-products/speech/senator-mccain-decries-new-authoritarianism-in-russia/ In February 2000, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright if she believed that ``the Russian government is justified when it accuses Chechen groups as responsible for the bombings.'' Secretary Albright responded: ``We have not seen evidence that ties the bombings to Chechnya.'' https://www.congress.gov/committee-print/115th-congress/senate-committee-print/28110 And here's a whole book on it published in 2003 by WSJ reporter Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State.He basically lays out a factual timeline showing FSB was behind the 1999 bombings; the Kremlin then made him the first American journalist expelled from Russia since the Cold War. Putin has always been a piece of shit. A lot of people who listen to Kremlin propaganda packaged in a slew of western media properties might not realize that though. Some might say I am referencing CIA propaganda. I am sure there is motivation there to amplify these messages. That said, it's pretty clear just to put to test what was said in earliest years of Putin's dictatorship against what has happened since then, which talking points proved to be accurate.