From https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/33711-document-3-memorandum-conversation-subject-meeting-president-russia (at https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/foia-russia-programs/2025-12-23/archive-lawsuit-opens-vladimir-putin-memconstelcons)
(from this french account)
(just something more to add to the long list)
Russia has been very clear for decades about how they view NATO expansion as a threat.
The western mainstream media is extremely careful about not reporting that. Instead we get absolute moronic drivel about how Putin is a mad and evil dictator who wants to conquer the world, completely unprovoked.
Among so many examples, the CIA built at least 12 bases along the russian border in Ukraine : https://archive.ph/mMm5u
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United Russia may rig local elections, but it is pretty clear that they don’t need to rig the presidential elections. All polling consistently shows that Putin genuinely has a large approval rating. We don’t have to like this as communists, but we can’t deny the facts. And it’s not all due to propaganda either. We have to be honest about the reality of what Russia has experienced over the past two decades:
We can and should denounce the economic liberalism and the reactionary social policies of the current Russian government, but we also have to try and understand by looking at the material reality why most Russians support their government. That’s not to say that everything is perfect economically either, but we have to draw our criticism from reality, like the KPRF who constantly highlight the failures and the limitations of the current economic model and push for a China-style socialist economy instead.
He’s definitely an evil dictator who persecutes radicals within his own border and definitely rigs elections.
The problem with this perspective is, there is nothing on the surface that distinguishes it from pro-imperialist western narratives. The “but no” part that follows makes it seem more nuanced, but also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense alongside it. He’s an evil dictator, but doesn’t want to conquer. He persecutes radicals, but is for multi polar participation.
What characterizes someone as an “evil dictator” in the first place? Is it if they repress groups that overtly challenge state power? Because if so, that’s every leader of a state, as groups that challenge state power are always going to be considered a threat to the prevailing state project.
Another thing to think about is, what does it mean to “rig elections”? In the context of capitalist state power, we already know that the working class is not in charge, so the elections are not worth much for them anyway. For example, in the US, elections are probably not formally rigged most of the time in the sense of lying about vote counts, but they are rigged in the sense that the party machines and laws make it all but impossible for working class representation to gain traction (let alone explicitly communist reps).
The ideas some of us have (I won’t claim to speak for you, as I don’t know where you are from), especially when we come from the imperial core, tend to have this embedded narrative that “liberal democracy” is actually democratic and foreigners keep doing this “other thing” that is “not freedom.” But this narrative largely comes from western imperial broad strokes justifications for violent coup plotting. It doesn’t really go into the detail of how these other governments operate in the weeds of it. So it’s important we catch that tendency and take it apart, not keep it unchallenged along with having an anti-imperialist view.
Sure buddy, Putin is more popular amongst Russian population than almost any western elected leader is in their country (according to western polling organizations), but HE is the one that has to rig elections! (of course there’s media coverage friendly to Putin, oligarch support etc. but that’s just regular liberal democracy like in the west, it was never supposed to be a fair system).
And what about prosecution of “radicals”? Ever heard of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, David McBride, UK prosecuting Palestine Action, Germany debanking journalists and activists for reporting inconvenient facts and voices…
So, do you also consider ALL the prominent western leaders to be “evil dictators”, or is that a label reserved only for “adversaries” or maybe some convenient western-aligned scape-goats like Saudi Arabia?
It’s hard to call someone a dictator when he’d have won those elections whether he rigged them or not. He’s genuinely that popular with the proletariat as well as the bourgeoisie.
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definitely rigs elections
We(sterners) always say that our enemies rig elections(, i can’t think of a counter-example). In this case however, we have surveys from Europe or the u.s. that confirm his popularity(, e.g., 1, 2, p.3&p.6, …), so why would he cheat if he’s indeed popular ?
We(sterners) usually don’t allow foreign governments to verify the popularity of our candidates by foreign countries, in order to prevent lies, but Russia allows it for now, and i’ve yet to find surveys that don’t confirm his popularity.
If you watch the Oliver Stone Putin interviews you can get this exact perspective but elaborated further.
Sure, it wasn’t that bad, and destroyed further the career of Oliver Stone, there was a telegram channel which specialized in posting russian documentaries related to Ukraine with english subtitles, however it seems to have disappeared, censored perhaps(, like the sputnik channel from which i had many links, censorship works in preventing mutual understanding and enforcing state propaganda).
Here’s 27 people warning that the n.a.t.o.'s expansion eastwards would lead to a predictible(&announced) reaction from the Russian Federation.
I could add Amanda Sloat, Bill Bradley, Tom Friedman, Joe Biden, NY times journalists, Jeffrey Sachs(, longer version), Jens Stoltenberg, Jack Matlock, …Despite insurances that the n.a.t.o. wouldn’t expand eastwards : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, …
How have Russia’s actions over the past decades actually infringed upon the interests of its opponents? Could it be that they cannot forgive us because it is the position of our country that made the military and strategic detente possible in the 1980s and 1990s ? Or that we voluntarily dissolved the Warsaw Treaty Organisation, depriving NATO of its raison d’etre ? Or that we supported Germany’s reunification without any conditions and contrary to the positions of London and Paris ? That we withdrew our armed forces from Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and recognised the independence of the former Soviet republics ? That we believed the promises by the Western leaders that they would not expand NATO to the east by a single inch, and when this process started, we agreed to basically legitimise it by signing the Russia-NATO Founding Act ? Could it be that we infringed on the West’s interests when we warned it that bringing its military infrastructure closer to our border would be unacceptable to us ?
Anyway, this is all russian disinformation that ought to result in journalists&medias censorship(, because ‘everyone should think alike’/‘nobody should think’).
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