After the big interview, I said to my wife, "I wish I could have briefed Putin before the interview on how best to connect with Americans and what to be sure not to leave out."
I think he missed an opportunity to document some of the most critical information on Ukrainian war crimes committed against Russia prior to The Special Military Operation of 2022.
But perhaps President Putin would have replied to me, "Mr. Botkin, thank you for your advice, but you fail to understand just how irrelevant America has become in serious discussions about foreign policy and world affairs. My interest is not in "connecting" with Americans, but in speaking to the hundreds of millions in those nations which did not join the West in sanctions against Russia. They listen carefully to what I say, even my lengthy history lessons."
This reality may have been best summarized by the writer SIMPLICIUS in the following post:
SIMPLICIUS Ѱ @simpatico771
"Westoids complaining about Putin's interview being too pedantic have an inflated sense of self-worth: they assume the interview is primarily designed to appeal to them. Little do they know the West has become so irrelevant that it's no longer even necessarily the chief intended audience for Putin's transmissions.
"For instance, many of Putin's statements go viral in China, generating hundreds of millions or even billions of views/impressions on sites like Weibo, vastly larger engagements than the entire population of most of the West combined. In the east, where the citizenry is learned, historically-literate, etc., Putin's longueurs are actually appreciated, dissected, and discussed. This is particularly the case in China, where the majority of people are not only history buffs, but have a sacred respect for history and tradition.
"In the West, Putin's words may fall on deaf ears and be drowned out by illiterate popculture noise, but the West is no longer relevant to the world. In other places, Putin's words will reverberate, consummating their intended effects."
11:06 PM · Feb 8, 2024
Zelenskyy can insult the President to his face in the Oval Office, and all Trump does is keep inviting him back. Relying on false intel about Russian casualties, the Russian economy, and the Russian polity, Trump keeps trying self-defeating, self-sabotaging escalatory tactics with Russia, playing Russian roulette but mistaking it for American poker.
Trump threatens 500% sanctions on Russian-oil purchasing nations today, threatens long-range missiles into Moscow that Russia could think are nuclear-armed, and sends arms to Ukraine laundered through NATO. All this does is enrage the Russian populace and get us closer to triggering a world war between two nuclear powers. As a Russian once advised me: “we’d rather eat dirt than surrender.” Russian history proves it, whether in dealing with the Mongols, Napoleon or the Nazis. Just revisit the history of how the people of St. Petersburg held out during what they called The Great War.
At the same time, Russia holds escalatory dominance...
Satanic social engineers have tried to starve the world of spirituality for 400 years (since the satanic “Enlightenment”) in order to turn us all into skeptical materialists, constantly analyzing ourselves, worrying, and diagnosing ourselves so that we lose sight completely of the Kingdom of Heaven and the job we have as servants. They want us to either abandon faith, or cling to the empty shell of “religion” instead of serving the Living God with fear and trembling. That way, once they reveal their parlor tricks, we’re supposed to be blown away by the acknowledgment that something more is out there.
Fear creates an altered state of consciousness, and that’s a key to Satan’s...game. Psychedelic drugs, brain chips, subsonic frequencies, DNA modification, hoaxes, cult rituals, everything to make us abandon a calm, rational, biblical worldview. It is a Christian’s duty to be unimpressed with this world, no matter how insane it gets.
-- Terry Wolfe