Is Vladimir Putin the backing-down type? Western policymakers are betting that he is, as they draw up ever-nastier economic sanctions they hope will force Russia’s president to abandon his proxy war in Ukraine.
Russians, though, are not so sure—especially Russians who know Putin best. Alexei Kudrin was Putin’s close friend and served as Russia’s finance minister for a decade: Now he worries that “Russia’s sociopolitical landscape has changed fundamentally” since the annexation of the Crimea. “We have become the West’s adversary again.” The Kremlin’s “anti-Western rhetoric and … isolationist sentiments” risks “hampering the country’s development in all spheres,” Kudrin told …read more
Source: Newsweek
