Putin

I was doing a little reading of science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle's blog. He is writing an article about Putin. He made what I thought was an amazing statement I never heard before. Putin resigned his position in the KGB on Aug 20, 1991. This was in the midst of the attempted coup by the Russian military to replace Gorbachev that occurred August 19-21.

In other words Putin resigned his position at the height of a crisis. If the coup had been a success, it would have gone badly for him. Apparently Putin resigned before it was known if the coup would work.

For those interested here are some links for Putin:

NPR Timeline.
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/putin/biotimeline.html
The wiki article on the attempted coup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d'état_attempt
Putin's life from his PR perspective.
http://eng.putin.kremlin.ru/bio
A different perspective centered around the many deaths in Russia of various political figures and journalists.
http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/putinmurders/

I am not quite sure what to make about the crisis in Ukraine. But as I have said before, no Russian leader is going to allow the Crimea to be a part of a NATO country. This was always not negotiable. I read an op-ed piece that claimed that Putin "blinked" and backed down from invading Ukraine. I can only say that I was one of the rare westerners who actually watched Putin's press conference about the crisis. I even embedded it on the blog. It is dated now. But how can Putin have blinked when he did exactly what he said he would do and not invade Ukraine? It may be a mistake to expect any politician to tell the truth. But everything Putin said in the conference in terms of not invading is still valid today.

This is in stark contrast to the US promise made to Gorbachev that if he allowed the reunification of Germany and dissolved the Warsaw PAC that NATO would not expand.

Oops.

We live in a weird world where Russia becomes more free, and America less so day by day.