Defense not so much. I try to be a realist

Apologies in advance for long post sometimes I write because it is cathartic 😁

I have no love for the man but you must understand this language you use reflects demonization of a foreign leader, and that's coming from propagandists who even told us he might die of cancer last year? Sweden and Finland are reaching the apex of this Russia hysteria. It has done no good to Latvia or Lithuania or Estonia, economic devastation is occuring due to this far right vs neoliberal capitalist pendulum swinging.

I want Putin and his allies to lose power to the growing communist movement in Russia (KPRF). The naivete he admitted to related to the west was seen by other less greedy people long ago. He only has the advantage of being more interested in resource sovereignty of Russia rather than international corporatiobs controlling the country's resources, which is legitimately worse it creates a horrific conflict of interest where people use unsafe extraction methods and dehumanize their workers etcetera, like Exxon and Chevron and co in Latin America. This is why Putin is preferable to post-Soviet leaders to me lol.

Also can you imagine our leaders doing adversaries foreign interviews like Putin or Lukashenko or Maduro? (In order of ascending affection from me lol, Lukashenko is meh, Maduro is flat out good.)

Putin has been happy to bring oligarchs to heel over the sanctions thing but he won't depose them because he is dumb and a greedy capitalist at heart. To use broad strokes.

My only point is you find a decidedly different opinion of Putin in global south countries, the locus of malice around him is a product of us trying to displace problems at home. Russia is moving more towards a domestic development policy like China and they already have foreign aid that is quite robust considering they are comparatively a smaller country. Their GDP was = to Texas in 2017 this is mainly because of the inflated value of our shit (there is a stat called purchasing power parity that GDP can be adjusted with to fix this)

While I think there is a lot of deception going on with the whole Carlson thing it's not like he just got blackmailed to do it, since he's gone off into the NewsMax and direct streaming crowd like my old landlord, who think aliens are coming and shit, he can fence sit between completely insane QAnon people and those who think we should refocus our aggression on China away from Russia lol (won't work btw, even with their military eating a much smaller amt of their production, as shown by the crisis in the Red Sea with Ansarallah taking or missile striking ships bound for Israel and now all US and UK vessels, resupply of anti aircraft missiles at sea massively limits how we can function in the age of rocketry. Anti ship missiles are extremely powerful and getting better constantly)