In looking for an article about how tough times are in suburbs outside of Moscow, i've picked a few up from the past.
"So what do you think dictators will take from our actions? I think they would be scared shitless if they didn't have nuclear bombs. As for China while they don't have a dictator certainly would not consider nuclear blackmail as they are to smart and have to much more to lose economically than Russia. Russia is an open air jail right now and is looking more and more, as the effects of sanction take hold, like N Korea."
Oct. 2016 - Russia Today: why western cynics lap up Putin’s TV poison
[...]
The reaction of the naive observer to Russia’s prostitution of journalism is to think its elite has found a new way to steal from the Russian masses. The obvious question is the best one: what’s the point? However many the communists killed, Marxist-Leninists still persuaded people to follow them in large numbers until the 1970s. No one tries to persuade you today that Britain or any other country would be happier if the prime minister had Putin’s dictatorial powers and the state became a collection of thieves without an independent judiciary, opposition parties or free press to constrain it.
But the reality of modern Russia is not the impediment it seems. Suppose instead of trying to sell you Putin, Russia Today were to sell you the idea that Britain is as bad as a dictatorship. You might agree, however foolish the sentiment. If you are campaigning for change in a manifestly imperfect but still free and prosperous society, you exaggerate in the hope of attracting attention. (If the government passes this restriction on freedom of speech, we’ll be no better than Iran. If the Tories stay in control of the NHS, we’ll have third-world hospitals and so on.) A lie is still a lie, even if it is made in a good cause. But I can see why people do it.
The disbelief that oozes through much of public debate in our time is rarely in the service of any cause, however. It is radical indifference; a furious determination to condemn accompanied by an equally determined refusal to commit. Like Russell Brand, millions of people don’t want to say what change they want to see, because a commitment would force them to take a position and lay them open to attack.
They aren’t cynics but pseudo-sophisticated innocents. They shout “liar” automatically at everyone who tries to rule over them – and doubtless they are right more often than not. But to dispense with the search for proof – the need to demonstrate that the politician or banker is lying – leaves the supposedly wised-up open to capture by cults, conspiracy theorists and Russia.
April - Russian Opposition Office Raided as Vladimir Putin Talks to Nation [...] Putin's phone-in was dominated by questions over Russia's lagging economy, social issues and foreign policy, with just two opposition-related questions, about the killing of prominent Kremlin critic, Boris Nemtsov, in February. P - Putin's critics hold him politically responsible for the killing of Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister who became opposition leader and was gunned down just outside the Kremlin. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=112895246
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I'd forgotten about Putin's ban on western foodstuffs.
Oct. 2014 - IT'S WAR. Food import ban means Russia is fully at war with the West
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Russians are about to lose access to virtually all food imported from the West — which is to say, a significant portion of the food that Russians consume. President Vladimir Putin ordered the ban on imports .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/russia-extends-import-ban-over-ukraine-sanctions/2014/08/07/46e5a49e-1e0f-11e4-9b6c-12e30cbe86a3_story.html .. to retaliate against Western countries that imposed economic sanctions against Russia after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. More than anything that has happened this year — more than the annexation of Crimea, more than the latest crop of repressive laws passed by the parliament and more than the West’s sanctions — the food ban marks a turning point for Russia. It is now fully and truly a country at war.
The ban on Western food has already led to price hikes and runs on supermarkets. Food prices were rising at a disturbingly high rate before the ban, and now they will probably skyrocket; there may also be shortages. Russians older than 30 have vivid recollections of such shortages, but the state propaganda machine is working hard to make people associate the looming hardships not with the memories of the failed Soviet economy but with the struggles of World War II. They are to think of their losses as heroic sacrifices made for the war effort. This propaganda, drawing on a wealth of cinematic and literary narratives of the glorious deprivations of wartime, may well prove successful with the vast majority of Russians who support the current war effort, at least in the short run.
A country at war invariably declares war not only on the outside enemy — in this case, the West, as represented by Ukraine — but also on the enemy within. In his landmark speech to parliament .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/world/putins-speech-on-crimea-referendum/2014/03/18/732d11da-ae99-11e3-b8b3-44b1d1cd4c1f_video.html .. in March announcing the annexation of Crimea, Putin made reference to a “fifth column” of “national traitors” who are in cahoots with the West. With the ban on imported foods, he has broken an uneasy, long-standing truce with the group he views with the most suspicion: Russia’s cafe society.
Putin’s first decade at the helm coincided with a period of unprecedented prosperity in Russia, brought about by a boom in energy prices. This accidental fortune allowed Putin to solidify his power quickly and to institute authoritarian rule in Russia. As he was taking over the media and dismantling the electoral system, the country’s educated and newly moneyed classes were discovering the pleasures of good food and wine. As it turned out, virtually anyone who had disposable income was willing to forfeit significant amounts of freedom if this coincided with gaining access to delicious meals in increasingly pleasing surroundings.
Feb. - Growing Crisis in Its Backyard Snares Russia By STEVEN LEE MYERS FEB. 27, 2014 MOSCOW — Despite repeated vows not to interfere or intervene, President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia has now found itself more deeply ensnared than ever in Ukraine’s worsening political crisis, facing appeals to support the country’s ethnic Russians, provide haven for its deposed president and perhaps even undertake a military response. The question is whether he intended it that way. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=98003759
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