Comment Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely (Score 5, Insightful) 52
Under Putin and his cronies, Russia has been drifting towards North Korea under the pretext of fighting with NATO. Money that could have been spent on education, science, healthcare and even space has been diverted to the war, where a new group of people are now stealing state money even more proficiently than before. With normal state contracts, there is at least some oversight; in war, you can steal everything and blame it on anything you want.
The internet is just one of many ways in which freedoms are being restricted. The war on VPNs exists for the sole purpose of controlling all information inflows and outflows, and even communications for its own citizens. Years ago, Viber, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were banned, and more recently, WhatsApp, Wire and, to a large extent, Telegram followed. Nowadays, you're expected to only use the state-developed and controlled Max messenger, where anything you say goes straight to the Kremlin.
Funnily enough, Putin doesn't stop there. He knows how privatisation was carried out in the early '90s, so the oligarchs who helped him rise to power and increase his authority, ultimately allowing him to rule for life, are no longer safe. They can lose everything they've grabbed in an instant under any pretext. That's been happening for years now.
Anyone who has opposed the government has either been physically eliminated, such as Navalny and Nemtsov, or jailed. The rest have escaped the country and now live in exile. If you dare to say anything against the war, the government or Putin himself, it is tantamount to treason and is punished by conscription into the army, extermination or up to 15 years in prison. The police are very well paid and on the government payroll, so they will beat the hell out of you if you try to hold a rally alone in any public square in a major Russian city. Anyone who still criticizes the government publicly is branded a foreign agent.
And the Russian people continue to endure despite their quality of life falling through the floor, runaway inflation, an inability to buy foreign goods and services, an inability to travel freely, and having to deal with an infinite number of flight delays for those who can still afford to travel to other countries.
I'm struggling to understand who still supports any of this. It's not enough to be a vatnik anymore; you have to be a literally insane vatnik.
It's quite sad that the West could have intervened in the years leading up to the Bolotnaya Square case, but decided that the Russians could figure it out themselves. The result is an authoritarian mafia state that is destroying its own country while continuing to funnel most of its profits to the West. Most of these people raise their children in the West, send them to Western universities and the kids barely speak Russian themselves.
If you ever thought that this was all being done to make Russia truly independent, it's all a sham and a faÃade. The real foreign agents who are doing everything to make Russia less competitive reside in the Kremlin.
Russia rivals Norway and the UAE when it comes to natural resources. This vast wealth could have been used to transform Russia into a literal paradise on earth. Instead, however, it is being spent on destroying a neighbour that dared to assert its allegiance to the West.
It's pure insanity.
