omg.... this is just such a dreadfully poignant interview between Michael Isikoff and Daniel Hoffman, longtime CIA Russia expert.
Hoffman: All those things were Vladimir Putin playing chess with limited but achievable objectives. This one, Vladimir Putin has altered his risk calculus. He’s playing poker where he might not have the strongest hand.
Hoffman: "The No. 1 recurring question that President Biden is asking the intelligence community is, “Give me the leadership profile on Vladimir Putin. No, no, no, no, no. Not the one from February ’22. I need the one from today.” Because he’s not the same guy. There are all kinds of rumors about whatever might be wrong with him medically. Sen. Marco Rubio said that he had neuropsychological issues. Rubio sits on a Senate intel committee, wouldn’t go into detail about sources and methods, wouldn’t go into further detail about exactly what that means. But that’s a very important statement that he made. …...
And so what we might see are the Russian elites changing their assessment of Vladimir Putin."
Me: Will the Russian Elites really really have the guts to do this????
Putin is determined to 'burn down Ukraine's house,' former CIA operative says
1) I am not a political analyst, but to me, it seems that Russian elites would not have the guts nor the interest to do anything of sorts. They probably have left the country, most probably have dual citizenship anyhow, and are trying to save their assets.
2) There is something saddening, illogical in Hoffmann’s assessment. (He should be a professional, after all). First, he says
“I will tell you that this isn’t the Vladimir Putin I was tracking back in the day at CIA. He’s a different guy.” And then he starts elaborating and paints a man who: “won a lot of wars — a brutal war in Chechnya. He invaded Georgia in 2008, but didn’t try to take Tbilisi. He invaded Ukraine in ’14 and annexed Crimea, and invaded the Donbas, and kind of settled on a frozen conflict there.”
And then he says “Think about the poisoning of [Russian dissident Alexander] Litvinenko with radioactive polonium-210.” And then he mentions assassination of Nemtsov, attempts at Skripals and Navalny. So he enumerates these things all serious, and it is a crescendo, and then suddenly he says, that “Putin has changed.” (How??) Mentioning Rubio surprises me mostly because it is gossipy since Rubio is not a doctor.
3) I think what might have changed the situation for Putin is, ironically, the intensity of our press after 2016. Think of this, I don’t know how the Internet is now in Russia, but it used to be pretty open, so everyone could read everything. And people were reading very demeaning things about the person who, after all, was on the very top of what is called “the vertical of power” in Russia. But: if Putin that Hoffman describes is very sensitive to either criticism or any form of rivalry/contention, then, maybe those four years of incessant attacks might have contributed to him being changed? I know it is free press, but when instead of analytical, we drop to meme level…sigh. In 2016, I unfollowed Twitter and stopped watching TV, all channels, for my sanity. However, there is a very well-known Ukrainian TV journalist, Dmitry Gordon, that I used to watch. I wish people here could listen to him. He is a political opponent of Putin, and he thinks, maybe rightly so, that there is a price tag on his head. He interviewed many of Putin’s critics. He is a fantastic interviewer, so people open up to him like to no one else. But - he was never humiliating, and this given Crimea, and Donetsk/Lugansk. He was asking people he interviewed very direct questions, so one could form an opinion, but humiliating, he was never. High-class journalism, and while I understand that people like Zelinsky or Klitschko decided to sacrifice themselves, I hope Gordon has the chance to leave, because we shall be in the need of good journalists.
4) I am writing this because: a) primed by the press always writing something about Putin, when in January I would see “Putin” pop up in the news, my response would be like “oh, the usual sensational stuff”. I am positive that many responded the same way. b) if officials got classified information about Putin planning the invasion, it is surprising that nothing was done in January to prevent, and everyone waited for the invasion to happen. c) I am incredibly afraid of nuclear apocalypse, and doubt anyone’s ability to analyze the situation.
I am afraid that, looking at the map and seeing how close Kiev is to the Belarus border, it might be taken. I wonder if West Ukraine will stay free. I hope it all is not for long.
️Russia's Ministry of Enlightenment announced it will stream an ‘All-Russian Open Lesson’ on why “the liberation mission in Ukraine is a necessity” on Mar. 3 at 12 p.m. Moscow time.
