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Comment by xenospn | Hacker News Reader

I’m often wondering if Putin is, in fact, the most powerful person in the world by a very large margin. He might not have a billion people or a space force, but he plays everyone like a fiddle.

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That's utter bullshit and i'll tell you why:

Russia has been severly weakened by democratic Europe. They have lost an insane amount of area since the fall of USSR and Europe has never been "closer" to Moscow, their capital.

They are now getting punished for actions of last resort. Eg. Invading Ukraine, because otherwise their entire naval fleed would be rendered useless, since it couln't even go out.

Russia is weak, although Putin tries to portray it like it isn't. The conflicts they create (eg. with their jets) is just for the show, they can't even afford it to build those jet en masse for themselves, lol.

I don't think he's saying that Russia is the most powerful country in the world, I think he's saying that as an individual person, Putin is more powerful than any other individual person. I guess the main question would be "is Putin with total control of a less powerful country more powerful than the US president with carefully defined control of a more powerful country?"

I'm implying on the : "he plays everyone like a fiddle".

The sanctions against Russia are still in place and it seems to be working. It will only get worse when Trump will ( probably) lose. Their ally is China and they are the weak partner on that end and China knows it.

Additionally, Russia is probably getting an extra "big reward" in the coming year for their meldding in the western world.

He's managed to keep sole control of Russia for 20 years, and probably made himself one of the wealthiest people in the world, so he's definitely playing fiddle for a lot of people

Putin had plan to make himself and his friends richest people in the world. According to this plan, Gazprom must be valuated at $1T at the end of 2016[0].

[0]: https://politua.org/ekonomika/30270-gazprom-ostanavlivaemyj/

It's more about being corrupt than fiddling a lot of people.

The one who fiddles the "best", is the one that you don't think about :)

Everyone knows what Putin is doing, so i would say he's not doing such a good job.

at some point fiddling by it's nature becomes loud enough for people to notice, no matter how deft the fiddler.

At this point he's a prisoner of his own making. Yes he has personal wealth to last generations, but there is no clear path for him to retire and quietly step aside for a younger successor. Even during late Soviet times there was always a slightly fitter and younger General Secretary to take over, but it's unclear how this would happen in modern Russia without a bloody power struggle. A strong leader at this point would be trying to build a legacy of consitutional, democratic (or even quasi-democratic) rule of law that would outlast him. I doubt Putin could achieve this now even if he wanted to; so instead he fixes the consitution to make himself President for life and let Russia fall apart when he dies.

Yeah and it's not like he'll be able to keep his wealth once he steps down... he's really in the position of a Mafia boss. There's only one way out

"Apres moi, le deluge"

Franco won the civil war in 1939 and did not really plan for succession until 30 years later. Spain didn't fall apart (and it could have - apart from the usual oligarchic strife, they even had competing claims to the stooge-like monarchy Franco had installed). So hey, maybe it will work out. Mugabe lasted into his 90s and died in his bed, the country did not break more than he had already broken it.

Total control is arguable, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Russian_constitutional_re... suggests that he may be attempting to circumvent the legislature.

Are they really getting punished for Ukraine though? My impression is that Europe by and large does almost nothing, partly out of fear of getting cut of from Russian gas. There are some economical sanctions, yes, but do they hurt Russia? More than they hurt Europe's farmers?

If there's any punishment, it certainly is not effective. Russia still occupies large parts of Ukraine (even some areas outside of the Crimea).

They aren't getting punished enough, that's a fact.

And currently Europe is subsidizing green energy a lot, so it's a slow process. If i'm not mistaking, Ukrain is becoming more and more anti-Russia.

I’m always confused when I see people cheering for sanctioning other nations. Is it pleasant to know that people are suffering, having done nothing wrong?

I think it’s a global issue. Pretty sure almost everyone has had these thoughts when reading a news article about some wrongdoing of a foreign government and thought “why don’t we just nuke those Reds?”, “why can’t we just come and take over the North Korea”, “that’s it, it’s time to show those damn Iranians who’s the boss on this planet”.

The media has evolved to take advantage of our emotional response. Hate seems to be the most useful one.

Would you rather stand nearby and do nothing when Hitler was starting to kill and occupy? Well, Russia is doing exactly the same now. Russia took part of Ukraine, Russia is killing Ukrainians as we speak ... and they plan to do more ... Would you prefer that 'love' attitude toward all kinds of scumbags?

"Would you rather stand nearby and do nothing when Hitler was starting to kill and occupy?"

What were you doing when the US invaded Iraq in 2003?

Thanking US for stopping another dictator-sick-head. From your question and history of your comments I can presume that your empathies are with dictators and other scumbags. This is of course how it should be for a proper Russian propaganda. It's well established tradition of Russia to protect all sorts of scumbags and dictators. Also Russia started a WWII with their ally Hitler together attacking Poland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6gg1z5DovI

I know it's sad for some to see another dictator down, but that is how it should be with every dictator.

Saddam got what he deserved, but the people of Iraq didn't deserved what came to them -- about half a million deaths[1] and later the rise of ISIS. Total number of people dead in the aftermath of American invasion is now bigger than the number of Saddams victims.

Do you know that the US supported Saddam in his war of agression against Iran? [0] Saddam could've been hanged much earlier and countless lives could've been saved if not for American support of scumbag and dictator.

As for WW2, please read about the Munich agreement.[2]

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Ir...

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_c...

[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement

I’m simply against the “let’s go kill all $nation_name” attitude. It’s totally fine to take action against scumbags. I don’t think it’s fine to extend the hate onto the whole nation.

Why would we want to give a country benefits ( in the form of trade), while their head of state are threatening our society.

We shouldn't

Nuking is unrelated to the discussion. I will never promote an actual war.

Russia is meddling in foreign affairs, invading Ukraine, uselessly threatening Europe, trying to spread misinformation and killing other people in foreign countries ( London, Germany, ... )

Even now, Russia is trying to influence/take-over Ukrains news agency.

This is not about conspiracy theories, these are plain facts.

And for this, Russia deserves to be punished. And Russians should realize it is Putin's fault.

We have been too soft on Russia for too long and the problems are just increasing. The soft approach isn't helping anymore.

Edit: new from an hour ago. Nuclear radiation spike. Guess who it is... Again...

https://www.iflscience.com/physics/unexplained-radiation-spi...

Russia is not the only country under the US sanctions. It always ends the same way — the government is largely unaffected, the people die in poverty. Sometimes they die because of the lack of medical equipment. It’s hard for them to leave because other countries are not eager to welcome them.

It’s not war, but there end up being millions of casualties. Understandably, a country values its interests above the lives of foreigners. It all looks like a world-scale trolley problem.

What alternatives do you suggest? Ultimately people are responsible for their own government's actions.

Putin has more protests than ever.

We'll see how that pans out, but I hope that they come back and the world trade table.

As an adult this time :)

Do you have an alternative to sanctions? I agree they aren't particularly effective, but they seem to be the "kindest" of actions you can take against an oppressive government that might lead to a civilian uprising.

History is rife with examples of failures to stop oppressive regimes. Hell, look at North Korea. We fought a war, we've tried sanctions, we've tried lifting sanctions. Sure, they are propped up by China, but what else could be done to improve the lives of civilians there?

I have no solution to that. The thing that consistently makes me sad is when people attribute the decisions of a government to all its citizens. There are 7b people on this planet, at least 2 of them cannot influence their governments in a meaningful way.

So, between war and trade sanctions.

Trade sanctions still seem to be the better solution, no?

While actually trading could be considered a reward for a decent government and a + for it's civilians.

Some oligarchs can't visit Europe/US anymore and spend their $$$ there.

They are being punished for Ukraine, but it's always the people that suffers from trade sanctions. Look at Russia's GDP per capita graph: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

Russia had a GDP per capita of $16,007 in 2013. In 2014 Russia annexed Crimea. In 2016 Russia's GDP per capita was $8,745. This drop was twice as great as the 2008 economic crisis. It has recovered from it somewhat, but it'll take time to get back up again. Keep in mind though that other countries did have a dip in GDP per capita in 2015 as well, but nowhere near the same level as Russia.

GDP per capita PPP did drop as well. More than after the 2008 crisis, but they have recovered from it by now.

It definitely seems like Russia is economically in trouble. How much of this is from sanctions is hard to tell though.

partly out of fear of getting cut of from Russian gas

This is less of a factor nowadays after the US lifted its self-imposed ban on LNG exports:

https://www.ceep.be/lifting-us-oil-export-ban-lng/

They're still dependent, but so is Russia on those profits. Right after the sanctions started they tried to sell this gas to China, but didn't get a good deal on that.

I worry about Russian nuclear materials disappearing into the black market. We have no deal with them. And they are run in a very ramshackle manner.

He might be the most powerful in current soviet union that is CIS.

However I fail to see how he can be the most powerful in the world given that USA surpasses russia in both military and economic might (which are pretty much the same thing if you think about it). Russia has no answer to sanctions and those counter-sanctions are just a delusion. USA can make many other countries respect the sanctions due to dollar being universal currency.

There's also China which is simply too populous to challenge for anyone.

The difference being that we suspect Putin has pretty much total control over his empire, whereas a US president for example operates with checks and balances

I think that GP point might be about being able to direct the military and economic might. The US is surely ahead in terms of numbers... but even if they wanted to stop any military involvement in the middle east tomorrow, and pull back from NATO, there'd be a lot of push-back and it would heavily disappoint its allies.

Compare with Russia: they have some involvement in Syria (and other places, I'm sure), but if they'd pull back from Syria, I'm not sure who else besides Assad would complain. From this point of view, their hands might not be as tied as the US'

I agree that Russia counter-sanctions can be just a delusion, but I think that another interesting point is that sanctions aren't biting as hard as they could've in Russia, due to their massive reduction in public debt:

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/11/russias-net-public...

They had slow (or absent) growth, otoh.

Putin is dangerous because he realised that in the Internet age, you can do incredible damage to a country with social media messaging, hacking, and bribery.

The US has been using the media like this for decades, but it's always been considered a side game. Russia has made it a primary mode of attack - partly because it's vastly cheaper and more effective than spending extreme sums of money on super-weapons.

So we know that Putin has been financing the subversion of social democracy and the promotion of far-right nationalist narratives in the US and the EU through a combination of direct funding, social media troll farming, and straightforward financially advantageous diplomacy - and possibly also direct election hacking, although so far that's been harder to prove.

The UK has been almost destroyed by this. It's a shell of the country it was when the century started, and the poison of Brexit hasn't even worked its way fully through the system yet. I expect I'll get the usual downvotes for posting this out, but the downvoters might want to address the points made here before they waste their time on that:

https://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/content/is-brexit-a-russia-b...

There's much more detail about this in a book which is being released soon.

I do not understand why people downvote you if they are sincere to the truth. You points are correct and what West doesn't realise is that Putin is at war with West civilisation. He acts like it's a war and he thinks in terms of war. People do not realise, because it seems crazy to create war when there is no need for it, but this is exactly why they loose, because Putin uses it for his advantage. I just hope people would wake up and understand how serious threat is.

Disclaimer: I'm no politician or economist, but while I do believe the US has military superiority still, they won't be able to wage a large scale war at the moment; they simply cannot afford it. They would have to take out even more loans, and right now the US' money lenders are the UAE and China; given that they are both close to Russia, they may opt to not lend money to fund the US' wars. And even without the threat, they may opt to not lend the money because the US will never be able to pay it back.

I suspect WW3 is kept at bay not because of MAD anymore, but because of financial interests. If a country decides "fuck it, we'll forfeit this debt", we'll likely see more armed conflicts.

I don't see Russia opting for a conflict though, they too cannot afford it. Not unless they're backed by a well-to-do country like China.

I don't believe China would become a direct aggressor either, if they would, then their economy would quickly grind to a halt due to sanctions and import stops from the US and Europe. They'd probably a proxy like North Korea.

70% of US debt is owned by American citizens. I do agree with the premise of nobody going to war because they can't afford it. The only caveat I would add would that America tends to do pretty well when armed conflicts happen as they supply the world with weapons

Souce: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-who-owns-a-record-21...

Russia's economy is the sum of 3 countries in Europe ( I think France, Belgium and Netherlands would do) and they redirect an insane amount of their GDP % to military.

But even then their army is ancient and mostly predates the fall of Soviet Union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Russian_militar...

>But even then their army is ancient and mostly predates the fall of Soviet Union.

>Post link to aircrafts stats only

While it is true that Russia is behind the other major players on modernisation - russian military does get new toys quite often these days on a stable basis.

Same goes for upgrading old T-72 tanks for example. What's the point of building armada of Armata if modernised T-72 has basically the same capabilities as T-90 which is more than enough in most scenarios? T-72 Where used in Ukraine and Russia was able to get enough data from operations to do some improvements to the machines and even to upgrade the majority of them even before the 'hot' part of the conflict was over for them.

Also how did you count the size of the economy exactly?

You can use wolfram alpha to get their GDP and re-calculate my statement.

And considering Russia is marketing their Jets heavily to everyone, i think the aircraft stats are enough to make it obvious how ancient their army actually is ( majority is ~ 50 years old).

What makes you think of him as more powerful than Xi Jinping?

shut down the oil and gas out of russia and you shut down putin.

You also shut down Europe. Who has the power in this situation?

The US is trying to grab it; they're actively threatening with sanctions to dozens companies that are building a new gas pipeline at the moment (https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3...), and they're successful in that some companies have backed out. The pipeline is already mostly finished though. But basically the US is trying to stop it because it'll reduce the dependency of Europe on American resources.

More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream

Or you could think of it as the US helping (some of) its NATO allies in Europe. Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have been vocally against Nord Stream 2. Just because Western Europe is for it doesn't mean all the other countries in Europe are as well. Even the previous president of the European Council came out against it.

Interestingly enough, Putin's space force predates Trump's by years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Aerospace_Forces (Air-Space Force, in Russian).

He does not play everyone like a fiddle because he is just one man and there are a million things requiring Control in the world. By the time he makes a move a million new things have happened. Ofcourse he has a network but that network suffers from the same flaw.

So its all illusion of control. Easier to achieve among some parts of the population when anyone who points it out gets killed.

But don't mistake it for control. He has lot of buttons he can push but what Outcomes he produces is all bullshit. The world is too complex and even Putin has a 7 inch head which can't fit in all of it.

I beg to differ. Putin's law school thesis was "The Most Favored Nation Trading Principle in International Law." Granted, that may be slightly better than "Tentative Study of Agricultural Marketization", but both are only theses, not a full book: "The Art of the Deal."

The difference is also clear in their propaganda:

Putin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r29k_T_o9To

(any reccos for Xi? I ought to frequent youku.com more often)

Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXTA36HO65g

Edit: removed snark

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