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https://theduran.com/a-balanced-view-of-putins-leadership/

A Balanced View of Putin’s Leadership

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

Putin is extremely popular inside Russia, and the Russian Presidential election voting occurs during March 15th through 17th. He will win, not because he is a dictator (such as the U.S. and its ‘allies’ allege) — his Government has, in fact, been far less of a dictatorship, and far better performing for its people's benefits, than the U.S. Government has been during the years since Putin became Russia’s leader on 1 January 2000 — but, instead, he will win because he has been one of the world’s best heads-of-state throughout that time, and especially because the Russian people are very opposed to replacing their head-of-state during the war that America and its ‘allies’ have been waging against their country — threatening its very existence — in the battlefields of Ukraine ever since the war in Ukraine began in February 2014. All of this will be documented here via the evidences that will be linked to in this article, so that you can verify it for yourself, not on anyone’s mere ‘authority’.

My 4 March 2024 “Statistical Comparisons U.S. v. Russia (etc.)” documented from (and linking to) World Bank data during the 25-year period 1998-2022 inclusive (Putin having led Russia ever since 1 January 2000), that, in terms of GDP growth throughout this period, Russia had multiplied its economy by 8.30 times, America 2.81 times, the entire world by 3.18 times, and the only large economy which exceeded Russia’s growth-rate was China’s at 17.44 times. I also noted that, “GDP PPP, or Gross Domestic Product at Purchasing Power Parity, measures the economic growth that consumers — which includes employees — experience, whereas traditional GDP measures the economic growth that producers — the owners of businesses, the investors — experience,” and presented also the GDP PPP figures from the World Bank, which showed: Russia 6.66 times, America 2.81 times (because for America, the GDP is the same regardless of whether the PPP calculation is included in it), world 3.77 times, and China 9.98 times.

On both measures, America’s colonies (‘allies’), including EU and Japan, all performed below the entire world, and the EU and Japan especially did and performed even worse than America did. (And, on both measures, India performed almost as highly as Russia did.)

On 14 March 2024, Reuters headlined “Putin grows war economy but incomes suffer 'lost decade’", and provided a highly professional example of propaganda parading as news-reporting, by selecting to leave out the meaning and context of the numbers that it did provide, and by even falsifying some of that by saying, “Putin said Russia's economy, now number five in the world by purchasing power parity, would soon move into the top four. But Polevoy said that ranked by GDP per capita - a more relevant measure of living standards - Russia was not far above the median of all countries.” Actually, however, the raw GDP (without adjustment for PPP) is “a more relevant measure of living standards” ONLY for the owners of corporations, who are a tiny minority of the population, whereas GDP PPP is the “more relevant measure of living standards” for everybody else (such as corporations’ workers and customers). So: Reuters was there presuming that the owners of corporations are of higher ethical importance than their vastly more numerous consumers and employees are. Another thing that the Reuters article hides from its public is that the temporary decline in Russia’s economic performance ever since the U.S. regime perpetrated a bloody coup it called a ‘democratic revolution’ in Ukraine in February 2014 and then imposed economic sanctions against Russia for opposing that ‘revolution’ or takeover of the formerly neutral but since 2014 rabidly anti-Russian Ukrainian government, has turned out to have been only a temporary decline, and not a structural or long-lasting decline (though Biden and his stooges said it would be structural and long-lasting); and Russia’s recovey from it has exceeded everybody’s expectations and turned out to be yet another failure of the U.S. and its colonies.

This is not to say that the Reuters article is an instrument of public deception on everything. For example: the article takes advantage of the fact that some of Putin’s economic projections turned out to have been overly optimistic, which did occasionally happen. However, the Reuters article never points out that the economic challenges that Russia faced after Obama’s coup in Ukraine and imposition of steep sanctions and especially secondary sanctions to enforce them, were historically unprecedented challenges, so that Russia necessarily had to do a lot of equally unprecedented things in order to defeat them, which it did. Projections under such conditions are inherently unreliable. Reuters’s attacking Putin for having failed in some instances, to project accurately some of the economic data for the next year or so, is just playing dirty against Putin, and lying to and manipulating the beliefs of the Reuters audience — not actual news-reporting to it. At the very least, it’s very selective and heavily slanted ‘news’.

By that article’s focusing only upon the history after 2014, and by its hiding the U.S coup that grabbed Ukraine for America in 2014, it was highly deceptive.

However, as is often the case with propaganda, that article also had some significant truthful allegations: for example, in its only reference to the sanctions (and the article made no reference to the coup), it said “He played up the fact that Russia's economy expanded faster last year - with 3.6% growth in GDP - than any of the Group of Seven nations that have hit Moscow with waves of sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.

But other data paint a gloomier picture. Russia's war-focused economy, where arms factories are working in three shifts round the clock, is faced with labour shortages, population decline and low productivity and investment.” The reality, which is stunning, is that the article is actually referring to the economy of a lone nation that is being assaulted by — as-of 9 November 2023 (and after 24 February 2022) — at least $360 billion in support to Ukraine’s war against Russia after Russia’s invasion, from the U.S. and its colonies and their IMF. It’s not ONLY Russia versus Ukraine; it is Russia versus the entire Amrican empire. And, yet, still, nobody has put forth a credible explanation of how Ukraine might win this war, but many people are speculating about the way that Russia will win it. Putin is defeating all of the U.S.-and-‘allied’ (i.e., stooge) leaders.

Not only is Russia’s economy far more successful than America’s, but also Russia’s military is far more successful than America’s — and even the entire U.S. empire is far less successful than is Russia: all of NATO has a lousy record and poses far more danger to world peace than it offers protection to its member-nations. NATO can expand only by fooling its publics to believe that the way to maximize a nation’s security is by becoming targeted by Russia. It’s that stupid, and it can be achieved only by lying ‘news’-media and propaganda against Russia (of which Reuters is an example). 

So, is Putin a truly great leader for the Russian people? I think not; and here is why:

His national-security leadership of Russia relies too much on military responses and far too little on diplomatic and other non-kinetic ones — which can be far more effective, far faster, and at far lower cost, not only to Russia’s Government, but to all of the Russian people — as I have explained in-depth here. In that article, I presented two strategies, one of which is entirely diplomatic and entails Russia offering to any nation that is in NATO or otherwise considering to join America’s war to conquer Russia, a bilateral peace treaty with Russia offering most-favored-nation mutual trade provisions and also with specific provisions in it to punish any violation of it by either side, so as to preclude any war between the two nations; and the other strategy is to take advantage of Russia’s having by far the largest territory of any nation so as for Russia to be able to relocate its capital city out of Moscow to Russia’s third-largest city, which is around 2,000 miles away from NATO, Japan, and any other U.S. colony, so that the U.S. regime won’t any longer have any way by which it might possibly position its missiles close enough to Russia’s central command so as to threaten a blitz-nuclear attack that could behead Russia’s central command within less than ten minutes and thus checkmate — conquer, acquire effective control over — Russia. Putin has thus-far refused to give serious consideration to either of those two strategies, each of which can be applied in conjunction with Russia’s existing and exclusively military means of warding-off America’s aggressive designs to acquire control over Russia. Either of these two strategies, even if used alone, could effectively nullify NATO and strip the U.S. regime of the mortal danger that it and its empire pose to all of the Russian people. Finally, the ‘Cold War’ would then be over on both sides — no longer merely on Russia’s side. This would furthermore save trillions of dollars which could then be redirected to improve the health, education, and welfare, of the Russian people. 

Furthermore, Putin is clearly incompetent at PR, and that’s another major failing he has as a national leader. On 10 February 2024, I headlined “Putin’s PR Incompetency — the Tucker Carlson Interview as one Example”, and then when Carlson was himself interviewed about that interview, he, in his tactful manner, made clear that he was surprised at how incompetent at PR, Putin actually had been there.

So, despite Putin’s being perhaps far better than any head-of-state within the U.S. empire is, he still could become far better than he is. Maybe he’s simply closed-minded. He’s certainly a good leader, but he could be much better than he is. Russians might possibly have the best head-of-state, but he’s actually not good enough for the immense challenges he faces. That said, Russians will probably — and ought to — respect his decisions as to whom his successor ought to be. It would be best for Russia if whomever that would be, would already be in training by him, because filling his shoes would be very difficult to do.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.