by Richard A » Sun Feb 25, 2024 9:29 am
And he and his mates are doubling down. Well before February 2022, Putin gave a speech in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century. Various people said at the time that that was quite saying something when you consider the competition. But the speaker of the lower house of the Duma clarified this the other day, taking a swipe at not only Gorbachev but also Khrushchev.
Announcing that a 1956 agreement which allowed British fishing boats to to fish for cod in the Barents Sea would be ended in response to the UK putting sanctions on the senior officers of the penal colony where Navalny had died, he first said, "With Gorbachev, we lost our country; with Putin, we got it back." But then, "When Nikita Khrushchev accepted this deal in 1956, it is difficult to say what guided him but it was definitely not the national interest." So basically, "the Soviet Union had two liberal leaders in its history and both sold us down the river."