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Comment by yakshaving_jgt | Hacker News Reader

Unlikely. Putin is a product of russia, not the other way around.

That's the way it seems to me as well. I've heard it remarked that one thing which never changes in Russia is the gulags. The Czars had them, the Bolsheviks and Soviets had them, now Putin has them. I think its worth considering that there might be some fundamental attribute of Russia, perhaps the geography, that gives rise to this repeating pattern in their leadership and social organization.

Putin is a product of the KGB and USSR, and is a uniquely slick, effective global leader.

a real life James Bond villain -- who won the game, and took over a country.

If you think he's slick, you should listen more attentively to his ̶h̶o̶r̶s̶e̶s̶h̶i̶t̶ speeches.

That's the same type of rhetoric used to diss Trump and it did not work to keep him from gaining popularity. The same goes for Putin, he might not be everyone's idea of a great leader but he has proven to be capable of gaining and keeping power.

For those who wonder, no I am not comparing Trump to Putin, they are two totally different people with different personalities. I am referring to the ineffective rhetoric used by their opponents.

Is that the case? I'm not the most knowledgeable, but I was under the impression that Putin is only capable of his level of influence to his KGB background. He definitely seems like a lynchpin to me, but I'd be interested in hearing more.

He's a lynchpin in the sense that he consolidated power, but it isn't as though he's some kind of genius. He's just an extraordinarily successful criminal/gangster.

In fact, his playbook of installing a puppet regime and having them "voluntarily" integrate into russia isn't particularly original — the USSR did the same thing with the Baltic states in the 1940s.

So, others around him could certainly take the reigns and continue the status quo.

For peace and prosperity in russia and for russians, there would need to be a deep reformatting and denazification of the country.

Putin is who our next president aspires to be. I'll just leave that there.

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