Blaming the West for Putin’s actions is beyond misguided.

Putin was a KGB officer who personally watched the fall of the GDR, which crystallized his distrust in the power of the people. He had close ties to the Russian mafia and oligarchs even before his presidency. Yeltsin picked him for his loyalty and willingness to disregard the law to save his boss, just as he had Sobchak.

His rise to power was marked by the false flag apartment bombings, just like the Reichstag fire. That was followed by wars and total crackdown on the local media that were independent or critical of Putin, like the NTV channel. His disregard even for his own population was also demonstrated by the response to the Kursk submarine disaster and the treatment of hostages in Beslan and Moscow. It’s also around this time that his opponents were persecuted: Politkovskaya was killed, Litvinenko was poisoned in the UK, and Khodorkovsky was locked up.

The invasions of Georgia and Ukraine were perfectly in line with the above and were needed to ensure that the Russian people don’t get too inspired by the color revolutions in the neighboring countries that spoke the same language and used to belong to the same country. Mobilizing the people against a foreign threat is also a common tactic used by dictators to distract the people from their degrading quality of life related to the lack of civil and political rights, overwhelming corruption, and so on.