Putin’s mindset, and the leadup to the invasion of Ukraine with Julia Ioffe | PBS

Updated 1 year ago

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Excellent hour spent understanding what’s going on under the hood with Putin’s mindset, with Julia Ioffe. You are guaranteed to come out of this with much greater understanding of recent history and motivations.

Much is discussed of interactions with the various presidents, and how Putin custom tailored his demeanor with each; when I heard this, this old video came to mind:

A basic truth should be posited here:

-Compared with every other country in the world, Americans are uniquely positive as a culture. The tip of the spear of the western world. Russians, on the other hand, encompass a bit more of Eastern worldview, and are more appreciative of the dark side. They see the yin yang.

Consequently:

Russians see Americans as naive. They don’t realize that Americans “believe their own bullshit” i.e. are genuinely idealistic – and assume it’s all manipulation with ulterior motives.

Conversely, Americans don’t realize how cynical and lying Russians leaders are.

-At least in comparison with Americans, Russians generally are pretty racist when it comes to black people. This has serious implications for relations with Obama, who Putin felt was a pussy in the Gorbachev mold, and when Obama ignored the “red line” crossing in Syria (which Americans almost unanimously agreed with, by the way) Putin felt he had carte blanche in Crimea in 2014.

-Russians saw Trump as their wrecking ball on the edifice of America and NATO

Finally, if we’d like to find one moment where the US started to fail, I think the problems started when we left Georgia out to dry and we let Russia grab South Ossetia, right at the tail end GWB’s aggressive era. Devilishly convenient timing.

Here is another interview, earlier, in the beginning of 2022, still very insightful:

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