Neaa, hold on tight because here comes one that'll make you spill your coffee faster than Mioara runs for Lidl discounts! Adevărul published an analysis that looks like it's straight out of Caragiale: I bet Putin's system cracks when that guy leaves, whether it's in three days, three months, or three years. For real, bro, Russian social networks are nothing but complaints: people are griping about prices and the ever-increasing Ukrainian attacks on their territory. I personally can't believe it'll last much longer.
Let's see how it started: Putin came to power at the beginning of the century, after Yeltsin, and was seen as a savior who promised to avenge the plundering of national wealth and reassert Russian greatness. The people loved him, but it took them about ten years to realize they'd swapped six for half a dozen: Yeltsin's oligarchs for Putin's oligarchs. And opposition became a deadly disease - as my mother-in-law, Veta, used to say when watching the news: "These guys, if they don't like something, they throw you in the slammer."
The first phase ended when he started rebuilding the tsars' empire, not the USSR: he annexed Crimea, grabbed Donbas, invaded Ukraine. At first, the urban middle class agreed, because they weren't sending their kids to the front and everyone thought "Ukraine and Crimea are still ours." Just like with us, when they said Transylvania was ours and people sang "Hora Unirii" - but when it came time to pay, they kinda hid behind their fingers.
But Ukrainian resistance messed up his plans. The second phase of Putinism shattered, and the third no longer exists, because Putin is too old to reinvent himself. He's stubbornly stuck in a failure he doesn't know how to get out of - like me with my broken BMW, still trying to fix it even though I know it's done for. Some analysts say he might test Europe in the Baltic states, to dig himself even deeper into the mistake until it's too late. His successors will split into factions, each looking for allies and trying to break away from the failures of the past.
The article draws a parallel that left me speechless: France needed eighty years from the storming of the Bastille to stabilizing democracy, and Russia has only gone through ten years less from de-Stalinization to now. So, the road is long, but it says it's irreversible. As Uncle Gheorghe, the neighbor upstairs, used to say: "Man, as long as he lives, he still hopes." Anyway, I'm going to tell Mioara that maybe gas prices will calm down after Putin leaves - because that's why I'm feeling the crisis at the pump now, man!
