barbos
Contributor
Bullshit as usual. Eltsin was reelected despite being hopelessly behind Zjuganov (commie) with the help of US advisers and oligarch money. Some say he actually lost mathematically but US was OK with that fraud which they themselves helped perpetrate. Same with Putin, US was more than OK with him becoming a heir.Again, can you really blame him? US has been meddling in Russian elections since forever.
Also, as usual, there is no reason to believe anything British (or any) intelligence say.
Nonsense. Putin shoehorned himself into power on New Years Eve in 2000 by dislodging Yeltsin, a former local Party boss who was a corrupt drunk. Ever since then, Putin has schemed to keep himself in power and has now made himself essentially "president" for life. The presidential election in Russia is almost as much of a joke as it is in Belarus, just not as blatantly obviously a joke. It would make no sense for the US to meddle in Russian elections, because those elections have little to zero chance of determining who holds power in Russia these days. Criticism is not the same as meddling, and a massive campaign to use social media to promote disinformation and fake news in an effort to manipulate public opinion in the US is not the same as criticism. That is a hostile attack on our country, not even close to the scale of what you think of as US "meddling" in Russian politics. Now we are afflicted with very serious ransomware attacks on US infrastructure that are directed from Russian soil with the apparent blessing, perhaps even direction, of the Russian government. Can we blame Putin? Hell, yes. We're not stupid.
US stopped being OK with Putin when Russia became better economically (thanks to oil prices) and started to buy new weapons. At that point neocons and military-industrial complex realized that they have a chance to feel important again.