From shock therapy to Putin's war
Putin is alone responsible for the war in Ukraine but prominent westerners played a key role in Russias post-Soviet trajectory.
https://socialeurope.eu/from-shock-therapy-to-putins-war
Yeltsin handing over the presidential copy of the constitution to Putin at the end of 1999
As Russian tanks battle through Ukraine on the orders of an authoritarian president, it is worth noting that Ukrainians are not the only ones who crave democracy. Russians, too, have taken to the streetsat great personal riskto
protest against Vladimir Putins outrageous act of aggression. But they
are fighting an uphill battle in a country which has never been given a chance to become democratic.
When such an opportunity was available, it was subverted not by Putin and his kleptocratic milieu but by the west. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, American economic advisers convinced Russias leaders to
focus on economic reforms and put democracy on the back burnerwhere Putin could easily extinguish it when the time came.
This is no trivial historical contingency. Had Russia become a democracy, there would have been no need to talk about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its eastward expansion, no invasion of Ukraine and no debates about whether the west owed Russias civilisation greater respect. (As a German, I recoil at that last proposition, which has clear echoes of Adolf Hitler and his self-proclaimed leadership over a civilization.)
Extraordinary powers
Let us recount the sequence of events. In November 1991, the Russian Supreme Soviet (parliament) gave the then Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, extraordinary powers and a 13-month mandate to launch reforms. Then, in December 1991, the Soviet Union was officially dissolved by the
Belovezh accords, which created the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia, Belarus and Ukraine
declared respect for one anothers independence.
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