Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

We Need an Offset, Not a Reset with Russia

Minding Russia

Christian Carlysle has a good analysis of the grimness of Putin’s victory again in Russia.

Unfortunately, the snarks at Foreign Policy (of which there are no shortage), set up this article with a tag line to click on — “Putin Won, Get Over It” — which isn’t exactly in the spirit of what Christian Carlysle usually says about Russia. It implies that we are naive bunnies who opposed Putin and backed his opponents out of bourgeois neoliberalism…or something. Instead of principles.

So no, it’s not about “getting over it” as if somehow the mendacious malice of and sheer bantom-weight thuggishness of Vladimir Putin have to be conceded and never opposed. If anything, now that the “spring,” is over, which never really was a spring, cold is in order.

Here’s my answer:

Christian, the question isn’t whether your analysis of the situation is right. It is. We all get that. I’ve been the first to say that I didn’t believe the demonstrations were very deep or wide and I didn’t think they’d have an impact against the Kremlin’s very malicious security state. People will keep trying; they will keep getting beat up.

But it’s one thing to explain the realities of the situation, and it’s another then to justify RealPolitik as the way to address the situation (which you aren’t doing, but many reading your column *are* doing).