Thanks. Your laying out of the utter irrationality and lies that shore up Putin’s tyranny once again hits home the degree to which democracy's survival everywhere and the world’s balance of power are at stake in Ukraine's courageous pro-democracy struggle against Putin's murderous power grab.
Unified, resolute, bold and decisive action is required of all free nations and NATO to stop Putin’s long reign of terror over his own people and the world. The longer we wait the weaker we become to resist the tyranny of all the monstrous Putins, Trumps and Orbans. Millions of us everywhere must rise up against the tyranny of these monsters.
A former KGB Officer, Putin understands how to use disinformation (deza), lies (vranyo), and compromise (kompromat) to create chaos in the West and home. 🇷🇺
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us Dr Snyder. I am filled with sadness for the Ukrainian citizens dealing with these atrocities and for the lack of help we are providing to them. We must get aid to them before it’s too late. I donate what I can afford to their drone program monthly. I am sorry I cannot do more.
Those like Putin who constantly need to amp up their consituency by demonizing 'the other' are so predictable. Sort of like Trump and the cultural Marxists and radical Dems and evil immigrants and creeping socialists or you-name-it. Those who depend on demonization rather than a positive agenda are inevitable forced to ever increase their venom and invective. But sooner or later there is always what economists call the law of diminishing returns. The only question is when either Trump or Putin will reach this point.
Thank you Professor Snyder for clearly laying out the increasingly twisted logic Putin has to create to sustain his European war fetish.
I try but fail, to imagine Russian society. How do the social scientists in the country deal with it? Are there still Sociologists in Russia and if so what do they do? I can't understand how they must work and think.
Excellent post by TS tonight, and thoughtful comments by so many of my fellow subscribers.
ISIS of Khorasan claimed responsibility for the Crocus Concert Hall terrorist attack. The four men rounded up by Putin's police were all Tajiks. If memory serves correctly, the Tajik people are a significant minority of the population of Afghanistan, a country that was devastated by a ten year war wrought by the former Soviet Union, a war whose conclusion with the defeat of the Soviet invaders was followed another ten years later by a new bellicose invasion with a different yet equally empty rationale by another imperial Nation, this time ending twenty years later, with stunning similarity.
Two days before the planes commanded by the men well trained and well funded by the House of Saud took down the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001, the flamboyant leader of those Afghans who had fought the Soviet invaders and the Taliban with equal ferocity, was killed. His name was Ahmad Shah Massoud, and he was also Tajik.
History not only repeats itself, but it sometimes rhymes
Is it possible that Putin himself engineered this savage attack to bring the bloody reality of conflict home to his own people, and to mobilize their support for a war that otherwise makes no sense?
Does anyone else see an eerie comparison between Putin and Netanyahu - both overly focusing their security services on what they perceived as sources of concern while ignoring terrorist threats; and, as a result, both being seen as having been “caught with their pants down” despite commanding world famous security services (the Mossad and the FSB) in their homelands? After the horror of the terrorist event in Israel, significant numbers of Israeli citizens quickly realized Bibi’s errors in judgment; however, Putin’s miscalculations may not become as obvious to Russian citizens because Russian citizens don’t have immediate access to non-state controlled journalism like Israeli citizens have.
Gary Kasparov has made some interesting comments of late. He said that Moscow is one of the most surveilled cities in the world
; police, security services, cameras everywhere. the crocus theater is only a few kilometers away from the Kremlin. How could 4 Heavily armed terrorist with assault rifles and caring enough ammunition to shoot those rifles for over an hour that close to the Kremlin? Why weren’t they engaged by police sooner? After over an hour of shooting civilians, how did they escape so easily? And get out of Moscow? The men all had local jobs around Moscow and are Tajik immigrants. Captured, interrogated, tortured, and drugged for a closed court appearance. it was also reported that they were paid which indicates they were for hire, (but not disclosed by who)and not completely ideologically motivated. Why did they not fight to the death like other terrorists do? Gary Kasparov knows Russia he knows Putin this recent terrorist attack has a lot of similarities to previous ones were FSB involvement has been suspected. Well, it is foolish to believe and spread conspiracy for the sake of conspiracy, I think it’s wise this early to keep an open mind, keep reading and discovering new facts, and compare those facts to previous terrorist attacks within Russia, when Putin’s popularity had also waned. Kasparov is already claiming Putin and the FSB are involved. We should listen.
It would not have been hard for the FSI to have fitted up the Tajiks with fake documents incriminating Ukraine. There are many in the GOP who would have been open to such deceit and would have caught that ball and run with it.
I wonder why the FSI missed that trick - too late now.
It takes quite an effort keep fighting the lies with truth and I hope these missives reverberate. I wonder if the Russian people get the truth somehow, if they are open to it. Some must. But what can they do? Some must believe what they are told, easier. They cannot think too much without getting into trouble. I imagine one must just live a life of what is in front of oneself daily.....until wider reality comes, say in a theater. One must realize ultimately, if you are Russian and think, that you don't matter. The Russian people exist to prop up the regime, the gangster state. The state lives off of the people: their silence, their labor, their pretense of life going on as normal. The sheer terror and death toll of that attack contrasts with the illusion of safety. Ukrainians must live with terror visited upon them daily.
We are having trouble giving Ukraine all that it needs in support to really give Russia the blow it deserves in return; a defeat. I thought that Ukraine would turn to "asymmetrical warfare" of necessity including terrorism.
The Russian people have not suffered from this war, not nearly what they are owed.
Putin has succeeded somewhat though ultimately will fail.
He bet that we would run into problems supporting Ukraine and he was right.
And in the meantime it's Gaza that is taking the O2.
This Islamist attack in Moscow helped turn our attention back to Ukraine and Putin's evil.
I am very curious to see how ISIS is going to respond to this claim of Putin. Is he trying to draw their enmity? In his secure state is he ignoring the threats to his people for the sake of focusing on other concerns. However, I know that Putin is vulnerable to ISIS if he ignores them. I assume he is not ignoring them behind the scenes. We will see what happens next? Will IS go to France and attack there at the Olympics or will they continue in Russia? Or both?
Thanks. Your laying out of the utter irrationality and lies that shore up Putin’s tyranny once again hits home the degree to which democracy's survival everywhere and the world’s balance of power are at stake in Ukraine's courageous pro-democracy struggle against Putin's murderous power grab.
Unified, resolute, bold and decisive action is required of all free nations and NATO to stop Putin’s long reign of terror over his own people and the world. The longer we wait the weaker we become to resist the tyranny of all the monstrous Putins, Trumps and Orbans. Millions of us everywhere must rise up against the tyranny of these monsters.
A former KGB Officer, Putin understands how to use disinformation (deza), lies (vranyo), and compromise (kompromat) to create chaos in the West and home. 🇷🇺
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us Dr Snyder. I am filled with sadness for the Ukrainian citizens dealing with these atrocities and for the lack of help we are providing to them. We must get aid to them before it’s too late. I donate what I can afford to their drone program monthly. I am sorry I cannot do more.
Sounds more and more like George Orwell's 1984 every day.
I guess Putin didn't learn anything about the
impossibility of ruling with an
iron fist from the history of
his own country.
Thank you Professor Snyder.
You see things so clearly
from your very close
relationship with history.
It would be lovely if Putin’s latest demented rage storm was the nudge required to terminate his contract, with prejudice.
Those like Putin who constantly need to amp up their consituency by demonizing 'the other' are so predictable. Sort of like Trump and the cultural Marxists and radical Dems and evil immigrants and creeping socialists or you-name-it. Those who depend on demonization rather than a positive agenda are inevitable forced to ever increase their venom and invective. But sooner or later there is always what economists call the law of diminishing returns. The only question is when either Trump or Putin will reach this point.
Thank you Professor Snyder for clearly laying out the increasingly twisted logic Putin has to create to sustain his European war fetish.
I try but fail, to imagine Russian society. How do the social scientists in the country deal with it? Are there still Sociologists in Russia and if so what do they do? I can't understand how they must work and think.
Excellent post by TS tonight, and thoughtful comments by so many of my fellow subscribers.
ISIS of Khorasan claimed responsibility for the Crocus Concert Hall terrorist attack. The four men rounded up by Putin's police were all Tajiks. If memory serves correctly, the Tajik people are a significant minority of the population of Afghanistan, a country that was devastated by a ten year war wrought by the former Soviet Union, a war whose conclusion with the defeat of the Soviet invaders was followed another ten years later by a new bellicose invasion with a different yet equally empty rationale by another imperial Nation, this time ending twenty years later, with stunning similarity.
Two days before the planes commanded by the men well trained and well funded by the House of Saud took down the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001, the flamboyant leader of those Afghans who had fought the Soviet invaders and the Taliban with equal ferocity, was killed. His name was Ahmad Shah Massoud, and he was also Tajik.
History not only repeats itself, but it sometimes rhymes
Is it possible that Putin himself engineered this savage attack to bring the bloody reality of conflict home to his own people, and to mobilize their support for a war that otherwise makes no sense?
Does anyone else see an eerie comparison between Putin and Netanyahu - both overly focusing their security services on what they perceived as sources of concern while ignoring terrorist threats; and, as a result, both being seen as having been “caught with their pants down” despite commanding world famous security services (the Mossad and the FSB) in their homelands? After the horror of the terrorist event in Israel, significant numbers of Israeli citizens quickly realized Bibi’s errors in judgment; however, Putin’s miscalculations may not become as obvious to Russian citizens because Russian citizens don’t have immediate access to non-state controlled journalism like Israeli citizens have.
Gary Kasparov has made some interesting comments of late. He said that Moscow is one of the most surveilled cities in the world
; police, security services, cameras everywhere. the crocus theater is only a few kilometers away from the Kremlin. How could 4 Heavily armed terrorist with assault rifles and caring enough ammunition to shoot those rifles for over an hour that close to the Kremlin? Why weren’t they engaged by police sooner? After over an hour of shooting civilians, how did they escape so easily? And get out of Moscow? The men all had local jobs around Moscow and are Tajik immigrants. Captured, interrogated, tortured, and drugged for a closed court appearance. it was also reported that they were paid which indicates they were for hire, (but not disclosed by who)and not completely ideologically motivated. Why did they not fight to the death like other terrorists do? Gary Kasparov knows Russia he knows Putin this recent terrorist attack has a lot of similarities to previous ones were FSB involvement has been suspected. Well, it is foolish to believe and spread conspiracy for the sake of conspiracy, I think it’s wise this early to keep an open mind, keep reading and discovering new facts, and compare those facts to previous terrorist attacks within Russia, when Putin’s popularity had also waned. Kasparov is already claiming Putin and the FSB are involved. We should listen.
It would not have been hard for the FSI to have fitted up the Tajiks with fake documents incriminating Ukraine. There are many in the GOP who would have been open to such deceit and would have caught that ball and run with it.
I wonder why the FSI missed that trick - too late now.
It takes quite an effort keep fighting the lies with truth and I hope these missives reverberate. I wonder if the Russian people get the truth somehow, if they are open to it. Some must. But what can they do? Some must believe what they are told, easier. They cannot think too much without getting into trouble. I imagine one must just live a life of what is in front of oneself daily.....until wider reality comes, say in a theater. One must realize ultimately, if you are Russian and think, that you don't matter. The Russian people exist to prop up the regime, the gangster state. The state lives off of the people: their silence, their labor, their pretense of life going on as normal. The sheer terror and death toll of that attack contrasts with the illusion of safety. Ukrainians must live with terror visited upon them daily.
We are having trouble giving Ukraine all that it needs in support to really give Russia the blow it deserves in return; a defeat. I thought that Ukraine would turn to "asymmetrical warfare" of necessity including terrorism.
The Russian people have not suffered from this war, not nearly what they are owed.
Putin has succeeded somewhat though ultimately will fail.
He bet that we would run into problems supporting Ukraine and he was right.
And in the meantime it's Gaza that is taking the O2.
This Islamist attack in Moscow helped turn our attention back to Ukraine and Putin's evil.
I am very curious to see how ISIS is going to respond to this claim of Putin. Is he trying to draw their enmity? In his secure state is he ignoring the threats to his people for the sake of focusing on other concerns. However, I know that Putin is vulnerable to ISIS if he ignores them. I assume he is not ignoring them behind the scenes. We will see what happens next? Will IS go to France and attack there at the Olympics or will they continue in Russia? Or both?
I think the war for Putin is grain and other resources that the multi-country blockaid has stopped.
Our election is so important.
Are all of you talking to everyone you meet about who they are voting for? Or why they are voting for Trump
It's 3:30am, please excuse the wording of these statements and questions...I'm going to try to find my 2nd grade grammar book. KST