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Showing posts from July 25, 2014

"Enough. The West should face the uncomfortable truth that Mr Putin’s Russia is fundamentally antagonistic... The West should impose tough sanctions now... Anything else is appeasement...": Russia, MH17 and the West: A web of lies - The Economist

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Russia, MH17 and the West: A web of lies Friday July 25 th , 2014  at  11:42 AM   IN 1991, when Soviet Communism collapsed, it seemed as if the Russian people might at last have the chance to become citizens of a normal Western democracy. Vladimir Putin’s disastrous contribution to Russia’s history has been to set his country on a different path. And yet many around the world, through self-interest or self-deception, have been unwilling to see Mr Putin as he really is. The shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, the killing of 298 innocent people and the desecration of their bodies in the sunflower fields of eastern Ukraine, is above all a tragedy of lives cut short and of those left behind to mourn. But it is also a measure of the harm Mr Putin has done. Under him Russia has again become a place in which truth and falsehood are no longer distinct and facts are put into the service of the government. Mr Putin sets himself up as a patriot, but he is a threat—t