Change Perceptions of Putin and Russia? Don’t Count on It. By Philip Kraske

Don’t bother people who think Vladimir Putin is the devil incarnate with history, facts, or logic. From Philip Kraske at unz.com:

There must be a chapter in future history books about how the mainstream media has hypnotized the Western public in regard to President Vladimir Putin. He must surely be the most vilified man since Adolph Hitler. Everywhere among well-educated and informed people I find no room at all for the argument that he is a rational and, for a politician, basically honest man. Even his obvious intelligence — just read his articulate talk about the Ukrainian constitution and Zelensky’s shallow claim to an extended presidency — makes little impression on anyone east of Belorussia; on the rare occasion that anyone admits the he has brains, despair quickly follows, for this intellect, one is told, is only put to evil uses.

He invaded Ukraine. Try making the argument that he signed two agreements with Ukraine trying to avoid a war, and your listener quickly scowls. Report that, just two months into the conflict he nearly signed a peace deal with Ukraine, and a sort of amused doubt shadows the face of the listener. Such is the advantage of controlling the MSM message: any information from other sources is immediately suspect.

He gobbles up territory. He didn’t hesitate to swallow Crimea, did he? Well, he did hesitate long enough for the locals to vote massively to join Russia, but more pertinently, he wanted to keep Russia’s only warm-water naval base there, a point Americans and Brits can certainly understand: just ask the folks who were expelled from Diego Garcia. And in the just-mentioned nearly-signed peace deal, Donetsk and Lugansk would have remained in Ukraine. Clearly, Putin is not interested in gaining territory.

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