The Russian writer Dmitry Bykov, who is the only significant literary talent Russia produced since Solzhenitsyn, says that Putin is famous for achieving the exact opposite of what he planned.
He wanted Russia to be one of the world leaders but it’s now more despised than ever.
He wanted to dominate Chechnya, and as a result Chechnya dominates Russia. The notorious videos of Chechens whipping and raping Russian soldiers at the front with complete impunity are only one of the many manifestations of this phenomenon.
Putin wanted Ukrainians to like and respect Russians again but instead he awakened such a wave of hatred and contempt for everything Russian that not even the most radical among Ukrainian nationalists ever wanted.
He’s an old, bumbling loser, and seeing him as anything else can only stem from ignorance.
Clarissa's Blog 
Very true. Putin has done generational damage to Russia’s reputation. Nobody will trust Russia or Russians again for a very very long time, if ever.
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The bubble of the Russian mystique has been popped well and good.
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It’s fine to not like a government but expressing blanket hate for its citizens is despicable, imo.
Nobody will trust Somali people again for a very very long time, if ever.
Nobody will trust Chinese people again for a very very long time, if ever.
Nobody will trust Israeli people again for a very very long time, if ever.
See how fucked up that sounds?
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The citizens in question celebrate and cheer every atrocity and loudly fantasize how they’ll do the same to Western Europeans and Americans. This is not something that a bad government inflicted on its people. It’s the other way round.
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“expressing blanket hate for its citizens is despicable”
Possibly…. but the very few russians who do things like speak out against the war are completely outnumbered by those who support it (either actively or passively).
The large number of russians who left the country, as it turns out, don’t oppose the war enough to do anything like support Ukrainians or protest at russian embassies. They don’t want to do the work of killing Ukrainians but they’re fine with the idea….
The human mind works through archetypes and stereotypes and treating individuals as representatives of their groups is inevitable in an age of mass travel/globalization.
Getting everybody to treat everybody as unique individuals is a wonderful idea but incompatible with non-assimilatory migration.
Human nature is what it is.
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You could say this about literally every country involved in a war. We’ve seen how americans cheered for the post-9/11 GWOT in afghanistan and later iraq. I would hate it if anyone classified americans as people not to be trusted. This is dehumanizing language.
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“I would hate it if anyone classified americans as people not to be trusted”
That boat has sailed… esp more western and northern Europeans think of Americans as warlike racist crazed gun nuts and at the beginning of a meeting the condescension hangs heavy in the air (and dissipates if you don’t take it personally and act and talk like a normal human being).
“This is dehumanizing language”
It’s the human norm that was briefly ameliorated by economic progress and is coming back bigger and better than ever as plans to squeeze populations with very different values together whether they like it nor not…
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I’ll be fine with this norm returning as long as it applies equally to everyone. And you know it won’t.
Somalis not to be trusted? You’re racist.
Israelis not to be trusted? You’re antisemitic.
Pakistanis not to be trusted? You’re islamaphobic.
And so on.
When the floodgates open for all nationalities, I’m fine with people saying Russians are evil or whatever, but not until then.
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“you know it won’t”
Of course not, because different groups act differently….
Also, in Slavic languages…. ‘russians’ or ‘Americans’ or ‘Italians’ are shorthand for ‘russia’ ‘America’ and ‘Italy’.
Whereas in English you’d say “In negotiations the US rejected the German offer” in a slavic language you’re much more likely to say “In negotiations the Americans rejected the Germans’ offer.”
So it’s partly a question of language use…
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The limit to how many people you can treat as unique individuals is around 200. Treating everyone as unique has been impossible ever since people started living in cities.
In order for large-scale organizations like armies or corporations to function, people have to be treated according to their rank rather than as individuals.
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He still has a lot of power. You’d have to be delusional to not account for that.
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