Vladimir Putin Thread

Putin tops Forbes’ 2015 ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People for third year



In spite of Western sanctions and economic recession in Russia, Putin’s approval ratings reached a record high, Forbes said

MOSCOW, November 4. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has topped Forbes’ 2015 ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People for the third year running. The annual ranking was published by the U.S. magazine on Wednesday.

In spite of Western sanctions and economic recession in Russia, Putin’s approval ratings reached a record high, Forbes said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken the runner-up spot in the ranking, jumping up from last year’s fifth spot. U.S. President Barack Obama went down one spot to third on the list.

Besides Putin, three Russians were put on the list - the heads of the Russia’s state-run oil and gas giants Rosneft and Gazprom, Igor Sechin and Aleksey Miller, alongside tycoon Alisher Usmanov.

Always practice safety

sweartome123 wrote:Here's something that annoys the shit out of me. Sorry if it has been previously discussed.

Whenever I talk to people (not on the internet) about Putin, many of them try to sell the "Putin bad-guy" myth by mentioning the murders of journalists. When I ask them to elaborate, they start spewing this crap that somehow Putin is directly responsible for the deaths of journalists. Some of these folks are very intelligent people, which troubles me. All they do is recite the garbage dished out by the media without giving a second thought. Even better, they try to make the case that Putin has eliminated free speech/press in Russia through these "assassinations" and media control. It's hard not to laugh, especially when they mention media control and propaganda, given that is what the United States exceeds at doing. I know this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone here, but I thought I'd add my two cents regarding this idiocy.

This is the power of the mass media. They can shape public opinion merely by insinuation. On this particular subject every NATO media outlet
piece that I read or heard kept citing some obscure reports by NGOs. I checked one of these cited reports and they included statistics for all
journalist deaths from any cause. So Russian journalists killed by jihadis in Chechnya were being counted against Putin. Also all the journalist
deaths perpetrated by local mafias were being attributed to Putin as well. As if Putin was running these mafias. The deaths from accidents
were being counted as "murders" as well. And the cherry on top of this turd cake was the fact that they were counting journalist deaths going
back before Putin even took office as Prime Minister in 1999.

But the central pieces of this blood libel is the death of Politkovskaya. She was murdered on Putin's birthday so that automatically proved
it was on Putin's orders and not a pathetic frame-smear attempt. It seems the NATO mass media does not do any investigative journalism
anymore and the fact that Politkovskaya was free to repeat NATO propaganda about Chechnya inside Russia for over 8 years on Putin's watch
without even being harassed somehow does figure into the motive part. For some reason Putin supposedly decided to off this 5th columnist
just when she was fading into obscurity along with the war in Chechnya. Also, she was offed but none of the dozens of other "dissident"
journalists who love to repeat the NATO line 24/7 on Chechnya were offed or even fired/intimidated from their jobs. So the murder of Politkovskaya
achieves nothing other than to smear Putin. So the question of motive is key and Putin is not the prime suspect, but his virulent enemies are indeed
the prime suspects.

The NATO media news "coverage" of Russian issues included the casting of the murder of Paul Khlebnikov, author of the book "Godfather of
the Kremlin" about Boris Berezovsky, as one of Putin's victims. I bought this book and it is a damning indictment of Berezovsky. Berezovsky
was a gangster oligarch who had connections to the Chechen mafia which he used in the mafia wars of the 1990s to seize businesses and
murder opponents. The west (i.e. NATO) treated him as some sort of dissident hero and not a major criminal up there with Al Capone. He
had the biggest motive to murder Khlebnikov and not Putin. In fact, Khlebnikov was not even engaged in spewing anti-Russian crap like
Politkovskaya. It is interesting that Chechens were involved in the murder of both Khlebnikov and Politkovskaya. This is not an accident
and they are more than likely associates of the Chechen mafia that was allied with Berezovsky during the 1990s. Berezovsky funneled money
and weapons to the Chechen "rebels" as well. I can see him being able to find hitmen to perpetrate acts that would undermine Russia and
the Putin "regime" quite easily.

A final note about the NATO media coverage of various intrigues in Russia is the apartment block bombings in 1999 that were supposedly
the pretext for the invasion of Chechnya in 1999. This is tied to Litvinenko, another "victim of Putin". All coverage of this subject
systematically omits the sequence of events in 1999 that led to the second Chechen war. Chechen Wahabbi warlords decided to invade
Dagestan (a constituent republic of the Russian Federation and which did not experience the secession wars of the 1990s) in late
spring of 1999. This invasion led to the death of 700 civilians and was beaten back by the Russian army in August of 1999. The apartment
bombings happened in September of 1999 which is clearly long after the Wahabbi warlord invasion of Russia. So why the f*ck would Russia
need them as a pretext to attack the Wahabbi nest in Chechnya?

We are led to believe by the NATO media that the FSB flashed ID cards at apartment residents who saw them in the basement area. This
claim is just retarded. The FSB are not cops with badges. How would any citizen even recognize and FSB badge/card? Clearly these were
not FSB but people who were planting the bombs both inside the basements and inside people's brains by creating a cover story. The
ultimate objective is to smear Russia and give the western media enough BS content to run with. And did they ever run with it.

Too bad most people just aren't interested enough or don't have enough time to research these things. They give their media the benefit
of the doubt.

sweartome123 wrote:"Putin is evil and a totalitarian dictator, who wants to recreate the Soviet Union (whatever that means) and now he has destroyed all "freedom" in Russia."

I completely forgot to mention this in my original post. With the morons I talk to, it always comes down to Putin. According to them, Putin is this despotic tyrant who rules Russia with an iron fist. He also has a secret stash of $80 billion, rigs elections, and wants to kill Russian democracy. Regarding rigged elections, I find the media narrative to be incredibly funny. Apparently Putin has rigged all of his elections (despite being LEGITIMATELY well-liked in Russia), thus preventing the "progressive, freedom-loving Russian liberals." And of course, these media outlets cite these NGOs that receive lavish funding from the U.S. State Department.

As with everything the Devil is in the details. The people you talk to have swallowed the BS hook, line and sinker because they do not
have enough interest to do their own research. There are actual opinion polls by independent Russian and foreign public opinion
polling agencies (e.g. Levada Center, run by a pro-NATO "liberal", Ipsos-Reid, etc) and the public opinion polls track the election
results, just as in NATO (except Turkey). Those polls showing that the "liberals" have no more than 15% support with a core support
of around 5%. They are fringe and one of the reasons they are fringe is that they openly attack the Russian people for not voting for
them and their "obvious superiority". They sound like fanatical lunatics. It is hard for people in America and most of NATO to understand
just how absurd the "liberals" are. No political movement behaves this way in the USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany, etc.

Putin does not need to rig any polls because he is the only choice on the block as far as proven performance is concerned. Between
1999 and 2014 Russian personal incomes went from $80 per month to $960 per month averaged over the whole of Russia and are about
$2000 per month in Moscow. (These dollar amounts are now lower thanks to the devaluation of the ruble, but in purchasing power
parity terms the gains are still there.) Unemployment is low at under 6% (using the ILO definition and not the silly official metric often used
elsewhere) even today after all the ruble devaluation and economic contraction.

As far as most Russians are concerned, Putin is the best leader they have had in 1000 years. He is actually a democratic leader and
not a tyrant like Yeltsin under whose reign people were sent to jail to do hard time for stealing a loaf of bread to feed themselves.
This is outright Draconian and stereotypical tyranny. Yeltsin ruled by decree and rigged the 1996 elections which he lost in actuality
as he had only 2% popular support. Putin released 180,000 prisoners and implemented judicial reform such as jury trials and probation
which Yeltsin did not even try to implement. Yeltsin was too busy incarcerating people.

Of course Putin is not personally responsible for all the economic development that Russia has experienced, which is substantial,
but he has been a good manager and any western politician would be super popular with such a record. He is being demonized because
he helped put Russia back on its feat. Russians know this and the propaganda against Russia and Putin is not working to hoodwink
Russians. It is just self-affirmation in the west for its own distorted view.

Militarov wrote:

Russian chocolate makers have made a President out of chocolate, full size, full weight.Want to get to Guiness book of records.

And then stupid NATO monkeys use this sort of fluff as proof that Putin is a megalomaniac and has a personality cult.