@Bollox Ref
Putin as new "Tsar" of Russia has been circulating for fucking years.

More Guardian ‘Brainwashing’ on Putin
By Jonathan Cook

I spend a lot of time on this blog criticising the propaganda role of liberal media, including my former newspaper the Guardian. Media critics like Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman have called it “brainwashing under freedom”. Because of a long filtering process before they reach positions of influence, journalists working for the corporate media in free societies replicate many of the failings of journalists working for media in repressive and closed societies. There are differences. The propaganda in free societies is more subtle and insidious; the journalists are more likely to believe what they write; and a degree of pluralism is allowed, even while plausible and important voices are ignored or ridiculed. But propaganda it still is.

I highlight this long and prominent article in the Guardian on Putin’s handling of Crimea and Ukraine because it is a master-class in brainwashing under freedom. The paper’s Moscow correspondent, Shaun Walker, is presumably well-acquainted with Russian society. He has full access to Russian media propaganda, so he knows full well Russia’s side of the argument. And he has acres of space in which to set out all the various viewpoints. And yet, he never manages to give a proper hearing to Russia’s side of the argument.

but an interesting aside, and 'take' on things Russian.

An article from The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/06/russia-revolution-tsarist-...

Reshetnikov said it was likely to be decades before Russia could seriously think about restoring the monarchy, and would require a more mature and religious society before it could be contemplated.

Malofeyev, however, said it could happen sooner than expected, and said he believes it to be quite possible that Putin could be crowned tsar: “Nobody wanted Yeltsin to carry on forever, but everyone wants Putin to carry on forever.”

Putin might be around for a long time. God Save the Tsar!

@Jamawani
lately, I would agree with your assessment.

Putin said it and most Russians agree -
The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest disaster to befall Russia since WWII.
And although the USSR had horrific losses in WWII, it survived and expanded territorially.
Not so in 1991. The Great Russian empire known as the USSR lost nearly 25% of its area to newly independent republics.

The boundaries of the constituent republics of the USSR were somewhat randomly drawn by the commissars as an "answer" to the nationality question. Other than use of regional languages and a few dance festivals, there was no real autonomy. Russification continued much as if had under the tsars. Most importantly, large areas of Russian ethnic population existed in Estonia, Latvia, eastern and southern Ukraine, and northern Kazakhstan. And the capital cities of nearly all the republics were strongly culturally Russian - with Russian the language on the street.

(Imagine how Americans might react if the Southwest, New England, and Florida seceded.)

Most of Estonia and Latvia had been part of the Russian Empire since the Great Northern War in 1710 - long before America's 1776. Lithuania was incorporated into the Russian Empire after the Polish Partitions of 1793 and 1795. Following the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, the Baltic republics gained independence in the power vacuum of the interwar period. They were incorporated into the USSR in 1940 as part of the Nazi-Soviet Pact - then invaded by the Nazis in 1941. Germans and their Baltic associated murdered nearly all of the Jewish population - then the German minority fled or was deported at the end of the war. Russians had been a signficnat ethnic presence in Estonia and Latvia for centuries - not just since WWII - less so in Lithuania. In addition, the northern half of East Prussia became the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Since the independence of the Baltic states in 1991, the Russian minorities have been treated as second-class citizens. In fact nearly half of the Russian minorities lack citizenship in the countries where they live - with the E.U. doing little more than offering mild rebukes. It is hard to know accurate figures since census data collected since independence of the Baltic state may under-report the Russian minority. Still, 28% of the population of Estonia, 36% of the population of Latvia, and 8% of the population of Lithuania were Russian at independence.

Lithuania granted citizenship to all Russians regardless of length of residency. Estonia and Latvia did not grant citizenship to those Russians and their descendants who arrived after 1940. Estonia citizenship laws have allowed for almost 80% of its Russian minority to gain citizenship - but in Latvia nearly half of its Russian minority remain stateless.

This is a serious issue - and especially galling to Russians. While the Baltic states where able to act without restraint in the two decades following the collapse of the USSR due to Russia's weakness, this situation simply could not persist. The time has now arrived when the accounts are due. And Putin is going to present the bill of particulars. Not only are there long-standing and legitimate grievances, but it can only enhance his prestige in Russia.

You can count on it.

It was one thing for the E.U. and NATO to expand into the former Warsaw Pact countries. Quite another for them to expand into the Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania - which had been part of one Russian empire or another for centuries. Russia may have been willing to accept some form of Finlandization - with the Russian population having full and equal right - but the past 25 years have been galling to Russians of all political stripes.

It's next up on the calendar.

@native

Perhaps because the US PTB plan to nuke Russia, China, Pakistan and other countries, starting with the first two, these being too powerful to invade with conventional military war-crimes? They want an undisputed corporate/military hegemony over what will become the lifeless ruins of Earth so that they can perish themselves, happy in the knowledge that they successfully ensured that nobody else had any money, property, rights, happiness, any possessors of these apparently deemed as having stolen them from Those Who Matter and who should have it all.

However, rather than understanding the probable effects of what they propose, some apparently believe that they'll somehow survive Mutual Assured Destruction and long-term global dimming polishing off what remains of the already-accelerating-in-dying-off oxygen-dependent life on the planet and even have a safe country outside in New Zealand, while others apparently believe that having a recording of their characteristics and memories programmed into robots will enable them to... well, exist forever (since they would therefore not be alive, even if this worked) so that they can spend eternity in a hell of their own creation. Kinda too bad it won't work out as far as their actual existence in this coming hell-on-Earth goes, if the rest of this is allowed to proceed...

why the US should not turn over responsibility for Afghanistan to Russia, Pakistan and China? Let them collectively try to "sort it out"? Our own efforts of over fifteen years seem to have resulted in little of lasting value, and they have cost us a hell of a lot of money.

And why in the world need such a proposition lead to "a dangerous military rivalry"?