EXPERT PERSPECTIVE / OPINION (Part two of two) – Russian President Vladimir Putin and the kleptocratic regime he has created are the problem. The Putin regime is arguably the source of most of the disharmony and disruption visible in the world today. No reasonable person can dispute this.
An stark example is Putin’s willingness to use Russia’s military in naked aggression against neighbors by starting a war in Europe, the scale of which has not been seen since 1945. He has threatened the use of nuclear weapons. He has authorized his intelligence services to carry out lethal operations against dissidents and regime opponents overseas (Litvenenko, Skripal, Kangoshvili, among many, many other examples). His use of cyber capabilities within Russia’s intelligence services to disrupt economic activity in targets around the world and to influence elections and exacerbate social disharmony, is without precedent. The intervention of his military and mercenaries abroad to support corrupt and authoritarian regimes is without modern precedent. He has supplied weapons that have been used to shoot down civilian aircraft. His military has committed war crimes in Ukraine and Syria and Putin himself has been charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
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