What’s Wrong with Russia Today

So what’s the problem with Russia? After years of verging ‘towards the right direction’, so many years after that Mikhail Gorbachev historic visit to America in 1987, and Perestroika and Glasnost, Russia is now becoming again like a giant bully, bothering Georgia with a massive armed incursion last month, just like it had been as an imperious state trying to embrace more than it could handle in the early part of the 20th century and in the 60’s Cold War period.

Former Russian dissident Natan Sharansky effectively diagnoses Russia’s current disposition in “The Real Russia Problem” where he emphatically pointed out the palpable moves by Russian President Vladimir Putin to disengage from the libertarian policies of his immediate predecessors and move back towards inward looking policies and into the realms of totalitarianism and absolutism, once again or so it seems, even wanting to curtail his people’s right to travel outside the country by aiming to rebuke the Jackson-Vanik Agreement of 1975, particularly to America, and thereon effectively bring back “The Iron Curtain” up once again.

Russia was efficiently moving towards the so-called “right direction”, towards wider freedom and democracy for more than a decade now and the world was happy for that and for Russians specifically But now, it seems Putin has a different idea. His move to impose upon Georgia, the most democratic country within its sphere of influence, is a major sign of reneging on commitments towards democracy.

The problem with democracy is that it is not a Russian invention. What’s wrong with Putin is that he was a former-KGB who was inculcated deeply against not desiring anything that is foreign, especially like ‘democracy’ that came straight from America.

This is perhaps what’s wrong with Russia today.

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