From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   As somebody who used to support Vladimir Putin, I am infuriated at what he has   
   been doing in Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have done nothing to deserve what   
   is happening to them. However that is not where the matter ends.   
      
   In 1985, the Soviet leadership elected a noble-minded leader named Mikhail   
   Gorbachev. He tried to make the place more democratic and more humane. In 1991   
   the Communist hardliners put him under house arrest. The people poured into   
   the Red Square; the    
   hardliners sent in tanks; however the military refused the orders to shoot at   
   the people. The Soviet military made a noble and righteous decision. And the   
   reward for their nobility has been their country plundered and its people   
   treated like dirt.   
      
   Has the world failed to learn anything from the Second World War? The lesson   
   is that you don’t humiliate a proud country. What Putin has been doing in   
   Ukraine has been just as wrong as what Hitler had done. But he has support of   
   people who are in no    
   way evil; who have seen their country dragged through the dirt and who are   
   correctly angry at what has happened to their country.   
      
   Russia has both the traditional Slavic authoritarian influence and the Western   
   democratic influence. The two sets do not get along, and they have been   
   fighting each other since 17th century. At the end of the Soviet Union, many   
   Russians looked toward the    
   West, and many believe that the West has betrayed them. This makes credible   
   the worst voices in Russia and endangers the better people in the country,   
   and, as we are now seeing, in a number of other places as well.   
      
   So we have some people claiming that the Russians are evil. They don’t know   
   what they are talking about. There is nothing evil about Anna Akhmatova, Leo   
   Tolstoy or Yuri Gagarin. They are failing to understand what is happening, and   
   it takes someone who    
   knows what he’s talking about to inform them correctly. Russians have seen   
   their country dragged through the dirt, and that gives credibility to the   
   worst people in the country. And, as we are seeing now, it is very, very bad   
   for Russia’s neighbors.   
      
   For a long time under Putin Russia was doing well, and by standards of Russian   
   politics he was mild. What he has been doing in Ukraine has been completely   
   unjustifiable, and I hope that it costs him being in power. The alternatives   
   to him range from Gary    
   Kasparov, a chess champion who has been leading pro-democracy movement in   
   Russia, to Alexander Lukashenka, a Belorussian despot who wants Belarus to   
   join Russia so that he can subject both countries to totalitarian rule.   
      
   Which one of these becomes credible is very much the function of the West’s   
   policies toward Russia. There is still time to correct the errors that have   
   been made. Empower the better voices in Russia by treating Russia and Russian   
   people well. And see    
   the place become receptive to Western ideas and grow in peace and prosperity.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)