Russian Elite’s Acceptance of Putin’s Crimes Suggests Future There Will Be Even Worse, Piontkovsky Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 2 – Andrey Piontkovsky, a US-based Russian commentator says that his hopes that someone will emerge from within the Putin elite to challenge the Kremlin leader are fading and that this presages a future for that country which may prove to be even worse than the time presided over by Vladimir Putin.

            The analyst had placed great hopes that the sanctions overwhelmingly approved by the US Congress but only partially implemented by the Trump Administration would split the ruling stratum in Moscow, but he now says that group’s acceptance of what Putin has done, on display at the Kremlin leader's speech, leaves him  pessimistic (rusmonitor.com/a-piontkovskijj-o-situacii-v-strane-v-rossii-sgushhaetsya-atmosfera-polnogo-krakha-i-provala-rezhima.html).

            The series of failures and mistakes the Putin regime has made and continues to make would prompt divisions and demands for change in almost any country in the world, Piontkovsky says; but in Russia today, he says, he very much fears that it won’t and that even if Putin departs, “this will change nothing in the country.”

            “Where are those people who could … conduct some kind of sensible policy” instead? “If they swallow the military ‘Tsushima’ in Syria” – a reference to the killing of Russian forces there by the Americans on February 7-8 – they are hardly likely to oppose equally noxious policies and may even do worse.

            “In general,” Piontkovsky says, “the powers that be morally and ideologically are simply falling apart in front of our eyes. But I as their opponent do not have any optimism because I see the ciphers of the entire elite as a whole and the complete lack of state thinking” among them. “Very difficult times await us” as things move toward “the complete collapse of the regime.”