Being a good person and a good leader is not mutually exclusive. I’m not asking from a moral perspective—from an objective ‘business’ or even political point of view—is Vladimir Putin a good, professional leader in his country?
No, very ineffective: Russia is full of all kind of resources and still Russia struggles with anything besides oil and nuclear power plants. Without oil they would be already in XIX century.
300k dead and 800k wounded Russians for some land in Ukraine. I dunno about you, but that doesn’t seem like good ‘business’ to me.
Ask any of the hundreds of people who’ve been tossed out of windows.
And I mean that literally.
or the hundreds more who got poisoned with novichok.
Putin was in his 30s or so when the Soviet Union dissolved. He’s an opportunist who saw the profit potential in a huge fire sale of the country’s economy. His wealth is roughly estimated to be $200 billion, all of it stolen from the people in various rackets since coming to power. The Russian people saw their country “lose” to the USA and, demoralized, they were disempowered to do anything about it.
Today the USA parallels this structure, with conservatives leading the defeatist, fatalist belief that we’ve “lost” to China, a narrative Trump fuels every chance he gets as it provides a shield from what he’s really doing. Every single crazy thing he does is a distraction from the financial racket being run by his family, who faded from the news cycle as soon as his second term began.
Your account is getting more and more suspicious.
How could he? Getting a million of your citisens mutiliated, your international position distroyed, your carbohydrates production/export destroyed, your weapons exports evaporated all in the name of few hundred km’s of gains and humiliation of your supposedly worlds second army? He pushed Russia closer to the edge of collapse than anything NATO or China could do.
He was an improvement on Yeltsin and he was popular. However, his grasp on power beyond term limits have been a net negative on the country.
What measurement are you interested in?
HDI is worse than most other former Soviet States, the exceptions are mainly landlocked countries in Central asia. GINI is even worse than HDI.
Russian arms industry has taken a reputation hit, from being the goto for anyone not keen on US weapons to air defense from wish.
He has managed to stay in power for a long time so in that sense he is good at politics.
Effective at staying in power, as any measure seems to be very good. All others are meh to WTF is he doing now that can’t be even weirder or wrong.
Is it an example of the dark humour?
