Some elements may want a confrontation sooner rather than later, after the new hypersonic missiles are fully deployed.
We've been in a similar situation since 1945 and NATO has shown no significant support for a major European war.
Russia is better off being ruled by firm hands............its history says so. Gorby n Yeltsin ruined Russia rapidly and it took Putin 20 years to bring stability. NATO's quest of constantly expanding eastwards..........will result in its collective bankruptcy if Cold War 2 is open on pay-per-view. Stupid Policy !!
Firm hands like Stalin and Lenin? Millions dead, starvation and misery. Right. Soviet Union was ruined in the 80s but not by Gorbachev. People demanded more freedoms and resisting it was futile. NATO isn't expanding, countries are just realizing that without NATO, they're at the mercy of the psychopaths in Moscow.
Stalin was a psychopath no doubt. Gorby had right intentions but could not "firmly" manage the transition. SU should have gone the China model way...........take it slow, conservative and practical. What really happened was the "system" was given a SHOCK economic therapy and outcome was the economy sunk by 1/2 to 1/3rds in 90s.
Ripple has built a SWIFT replacement system. Once the criminal SEC lawsuit against XRP is tossed out or settled the sky is the limit for Ripple and XRP
Yeah Yeltsin "ruined Russia" (to the extent it wasn't already pathetically broken after Soviet rule) but you got to be careful with cause and effects beyond that statement. The economic reforms Yeltsin sought were brought about (with the help of elite US economists) in a very bad way that in the short term led to economic chaos and in the slightly longer term to the rise of the oligarchy (or shall we say kleptocracy). Yeltsin's ultimate failure was that he trusted Putin, though. Like, who the hell would let a KGB agent loose in government? Democracy was never given a chance in Russia.
The purpose of having democracy is not to make a country rich. Economic prosperity is the by-product and actually just one of the by-products of having democracy. The purpose of having democracy is to make sure not to have psychopaths single-handedly rule the country and rule people's lives. Psychopaths are not all bad; they all have merits and they might even be brilliant geniuses but when they are allowed to single-handedly rule a country, the country and its people eventually and ultimately suffers and that has been proven again and again and again and again throughout history because humans are flawed and because humans are flawed they cannot be relied upon to always make decisions unilaterally and never challenged. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is what people don't understand and keep trying to use the $ sign as the measuring tool to assess democracy. Anybody can make money. Making money is not that difficult, what's difficult is making money the right way.