Speaking at the end of the meeting, Macron warned: “There is a change in Russia’s stance. It is striving to take on further territory and it has its eyes not just on Ukraine but on many other countries as well, so Russia is presenting a greater danger.”
Among those present at the meeting were the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the UK foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, and the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte.
I think we should not forget that the West, especially the USA, definitely played a role in the 1990s in keeping Boris Yeltsin (and with him many of today’s oligarchs) in power and thus helped establishing the autocratic system that Russia has today.
Not sure what you mean by helping Yeltsin stay in power? I can’t really remember Yeltsin power being in danger to beginn with. As far as I know, one of the bigger problems was the very president focus constitution, which made it really easy for Putin to consolidate Power and Oligarchs making a really bad judgement that they can control Putin.
In the 1996 election, the USA under Bill Clinton actively supported Boris Yeltsin. Unfortunately, I can’t find any in-depth sources in English at the moment, but this article gives a general overview.
Edit: Some more background info on the topic here.
Fair point, but his opponent was Gennady Zyuganov, so we were all incredible lucky - this is not the worst possible timeline we live in.
Yea, maybe. I’m just saying that the West has played a part in how the Russian system has developed into what it is today.
https://fair.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/TimeYanks.jpg