The Real Russia

We may get an opportunity in the next week or so to see the real “new face of Russia” as developments in the Crimea and, particularly, in Ukraine take place.
by Charlie Leck

President Obama has warned Russia against interfering in political developments in the Ukraine. Russia faces world condemnation, our President warned, if it involves itself there. Well, really! I’m sure that has the Great Bear trembling. Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin is feeling particularly good and powerful after the successful Olympic Games in his nation.

As usual the United States and the rest of the generally civilized, western world will have to sit back as observers and passively take whatever it is that Russia does in this situation. This is a big bad bully with whom no nation particularly wants to deal right now. We’ve got enough on our plates and we are still licking our wounds from our military activities in the Middle East.

The President has warned Russia that there will be “costs” if they do interfere. What costs? I can’t imagine it will go very far beyond restricting trade with Russia and some kind of attempts to influence Russia’s monetary values. What else can we do? Start another war!

There’s no question that Russia is a far different place from the old, communistic Soviet Union, but we’ll need to remember that this is a nation with shaky psychological balance and it is difficult to estimate or predict what it might do.

It seems to me that we are all going to get to know Mr. Putin a lot better in the coming weeks and he may not look quite so rosey as he did in Souchi!

Russia has not been a favored nation in America during my entire life-time; and I think America’s distrust of Russia goes all the way back to 1917 (the Russian Revolution that saw a communist regime take over with such violence).

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