Redrock12 said:
Putin is one smart man. By occupying the Crimea he not only secured the Russian naval base, but took it out from under the IMF jackboot, thus nullifying Crimea of any obligation to the $145Bn debt.
As well, you can bet your bottom dollar that Putin will be offering the Crimea economic incentives to further cement Crimea-Russia ties.
Unlike the West, Putin offers peace, security, and prosperity, not economic ruin and social disintegration.
Crimeans would be nuts not to welcome Russian intervention.
Going by what's happening in Ukraine, the alternative is not very pretty.
I agree that "Putin is one smart man." A quick check of his biography may hold some clues?
_http://www.notablebiographies.com/Pu-Ro/Putin-Vladimir.html
Vladimir Putin was born on October 1, 1952, in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. An only child, his father was a foreman in a metal factory and his mother was a homemaker. Putin lived with his parents in an apartment with two other families. (He was raised as an only child because his two brothers died. One shortly after birth the other got diphtheria after World War Two.)
His mother secretly had him baptized as an Orthodox Christian.
By the age of sixteen he was a top-ranked expert at sambo, a Russian combination of judo and wrestling. By the time he was a teenager Putin had begun to display the ambition that he later became known for, and he attended a respected high school, School 281, which only accepted students with near-perfect grades.
At Leningrad State University, Putin graduated from the law department in 1975 but instead of entering the law field right out of school, Putin landed a job with the KGB, the only one in his class of one hundred to be chosen. The branch he was assigned to was responsible for recruiting foreigners who would work to gather information for KGB intelligence.
In the early 1980s Putin met and married his wife, Lyudmila, a former teacher of French and English.
In 1985 the KGB sent him to Dresden, East Germany. Around the time Putin went to East Germany, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–) was beginning to introduce economic and social reforms (improvements). Putin was apparently a firm believer in the changes. In 1989 the Berlin Wall, which stood for nearly forty years separating East from West Germany, was torn down and the two united. Though Putin supposedly had known that this was going to happen, he was disappointed that it occurred amid chaos and that the Soviet leadership had not managed it better. ( Comment: This experience may be the impetus that led to Putin forming an organization called BRICS with other Nation/Countries to bring economic and social reforms in growth, while each governing body retains their ethnic and religious background and sovereignty status. )
In 1990 Putin returned to Leningrad and continued his undercover intelligence work for the KGB. In 1991, just as the Soviet Union was beginning to fall apart, Putin left the KGB with the rank of colonel, in order to get involved in politics. Putin went to work for Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St. Petersburg, as an aide and in 1994 became deputy mayor.
During Putin's time in city government, he reportedly helped the city build highways, telecommunications, and hotels, all to support foreign investment. Although St. Petersburg never grew to become the financial powerhouse that many had hoped, its fortunes improved as many foreign investors moved in.
In August of 1999, after Yeltsin had gone through five prime ministers in seventeen months, he appointed Putin, who many thought was not worthy of succeeding the ill president. For one thing, he had little political experience; for another, his appearance and personality seemed boring.
In December of 1999, Russia held elections for the 450-seat Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament (governing body). Putin's newly-formed Unity Party came in a close second to the Communists in a stunning showing. Though Putin was not a candidate in this election, he became the obvious front-runner in the upcoming presidential race scheduled for June of 2000.
On New Year's Eve in 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly stepped down as president, naming Putin as acting president.
In Putin's first speech as acting president, he promised, "Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, the right to private property—these basic principles of a civilized society will be protected," according to a Newsweek report.
On March 26, 2000, Russians elected Putin out of a field of eleven candidates. After his election, Putin's first legislative move was to win approval of the Start II arms reduction treaty from the Duma. The deal, which was negotiated seven years earlier, involved decreasing both the Russian and American nuclear buildup by half. Putin's move on this issue was seen as a positive step in his willingness to develop a better relationship with the United States.
In addition, one of Putin's earliest moves involved working with a team of economists to develop a plan to improve the country's economy. On May 7, 2000, Putin was officially sworn in as Russia's second president and its first in a free transfer of power in the nation's eleven-hundred-year history.
Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, a 2013 book by Brookings Institution scholars Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy.
_http://www.straight.com/news/582711/vladimir-putin-mines-history-solidify-his-position-russias-modern-czar
Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin also disclosed how Putin applies lessons he learned in the late 1980s as a KGB case officer in Dresden, Germany.
He holds an annual call-in show for hours with the Russian masses. One of the reasons is it gives him insights into what average people might be thinking about.
He's the "case officer", listening to people's comments, winning them over.
The book also reveals that Putin is a survivalist. This mindset was forged during his childhood in Leningrad. His older brother had died during the Nazis' siege of the city, which resulted in food shortages and massive suffering.
As a survivalist, Putin retired his country's international debt obligations as quickly as possible. It left Russia on a firmer financial footing when the global economy melted down in 2008.
Putin served two terms as president from 2000 to 2008, then spent a stint as prime minister before being elected president again in 2012.
He often relies on historical references to justify his actions. "Ultimately, Putin's uses of history and his synthesis of ideas are part of a carefully calculated policy," Hill and Gaddy wrote. "Drawing on his personal interest in Russian history, Putin has weighed up the political debates of the 1990s about Russia's future and the restoration of the state. He has then carefully mined Russia's past for what he deems to be appropriate parallels and concepts."
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia
Still in deep depression by the mid-1990s, Russia's economy was hit further by the financial crash of 1998. After the 1998 financial crisis, Yeltsin was at the end of his political career. Just hours before the first day of 2000, Yeltsin made a surprise announcement of his resignation, leaving the government in the hands of the little-known Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB official and head of the FSB, the KGB's post-Soviet successor agency.[202] In 2000, the new acting president defeated his opponents in the presidential election on 26 March, and won a landslide 4 years later.[203] International observers were alarmed by late 2004 moves to further tighten the presidency's control over parliament, civil society, and regional officeholders.[204] In 2008 Dmitri Medvedev, a former Gazprom chairman and Putin's head of staff, was elected new President of Russia. In 2012, Putin was once again elected as President.
Russia has had difficulty attracting foreign direct investment and has experienced large capital outflows in the past several years. Russia's long-term problems also include a shrinking workforce, rampant corruption, and underinvestment in infrastructure. Nevertheless, reversion to a socialist command economy seemed almost impossible.
Russia ended 2006 with its eighth straight year of growth, averaging 6.7% annually since the financial crisis of 1998. Russia is well ahead of most other resource-rich countries in its economic development, with a long tradition of education, science, and industry.
Comment: With Putin's experience and background, I don't see where he would violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine especially Crimea which has a long history with Russia?
