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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat Putin Really Wants....
an interesting article from The Atlantic. I can't help but think that if Putin really wants better relations with the United States he should just come clean about their interference with our elections. Get it out there, get it over with, move on....that's how relationships work. Tell us what you did and stop denying it. That the only way there can be any trust. The interesting part is this-The election hack was a very emotional, tactical decision. The Kremlin was very upset about the Panama Papers, which cast light on Putins wealth.
Over the past year, Russian hackers have become the stuff of legend in the United States. According to U.S. intelligence assessments and media investigations, they were responsible for breaching the servers of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They spread the information they filched through friendly outlets such as WikiLeaks, to devastating effect. With President Vladimir Putins blessing, they probed the voting infrastructure of various U.S. states. They quietly bought divisive ads and organized political events on Facebook, acting as the bellows in Americas raging culture wars.
But most Russians dont recognize the Russia portrayed in this story: powerful, organized, and led by an omniscient, omnipotent leader who is able to both formulate and execute a complex and highly detailed plot.
Gleb Pavlovsky, a political consultant who helped Putin win his first presidential campaign, in 2000, and served as a Kremlin adviser until 2011, simply laughed when I asked him about Putins role in Donald Trumps election. We did an amazing job in the first decade of Putins rule of creating the illusion that Putin controls everything in Russia, he said. Now its just funny how much Americans attribute to him.
A businessman who is high up in Putins United Russia party said over an espresso at a Moscow café: Youre telling me that everything in Russia works as poorly as it does, except our hackers? Rosneftthe state-owned oil giantdoesnt work well. Our health-care system doesnt work well. Our education system doesnt work well. And here, all of a sudden, are our hackers, and theyre amazing?
gordianot
(15,242 posts)Laxman
(2,419 posts)must really be hurting Putin and his cronies. But how can that be? Obama didn't know what he was doing, right? Another interesting part of the article-"Putin is said to have watched the video of Qaddafis lynching over and over, obsessively. He feared the Americans would come for him next."