Wednesday, July 30, 2014

I Don't Think Vladimir Putin Is Having a Good Month

It seems like such a short while that there were people actually thinking that Putin would come out on top in his overreaching regarding putting people in Ukraine and pretending he wasn't and seizing Crimea and whatever he thought he was doing, but lately?

Apparently, arming halfwit psychopaths on your border is a bad thing if it seems to have resulted in the deaths of nearly 300 positively wonderful people, including some 108 AIDS researchers. That his country pumped out ridiculous-sounding propaganda (at one point, some separatist asshole posited the conspiracy theory that the flight in question already was full of dead bodies--oh, including 100 plus people well-enough known and doing valuable enough work that no one would have used them for a false flag? Yeah, fuck that.) Or even suggesting that Ukraine, which has been having problems with their aircraft being downed by separatists (funded and armed by whom, one might ask) somehow did this themselves.

No one believes the Russian government (which is to say, hapless Vlad) at all. He looks like a smacked ass, actually, trying to cover up for the imbeciles who seem to have done this while trying not to have been at all involved. And so it happened that just yesterday, his country was hit with some pretty big old sanctions, which will affect the Putin government's stability.

See--I see Putin as a hard ass riding on the support of oligarchs (much as I suspect him of being one, himself.) His support will fall out if it costs Russia's richer folks money. Worse yet, he becomes useless if he looks like a fool. And he is. And if he decides "Fuck it--I'm just going to invade"--he might be a bigger fool than anyone ever guessed.

I think he kind of does understand there are personal repercussions for him. Possibly. After all, he got bit very recently over his government's destruction of Yukos. And I think there are people who might not mind taking mad Vlad  down if he wastes resources to lose financial ties with Europe and piss up their backyard. So I'd call this a very bad month for him, and no, I don't think either good or bad that this is all to do with Obama, anyway. It's mostly Putin trying to do Putin. And the mess it makes.

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