12/27/2023 0 Comments Julia ioffe russia![]() You know, the West hasn't made it that easy for Russian oligarchs to peel off from Vladimir Putin. The West wants to seize your yachts, and open windows are an existential threat. SHAPIRO: I don't want to make light of a situation where people are dying, but it seems like a tough time to be an oligarch. JULIA IOFFE: Thanks so much for having me, Ari. Julia Ioffe is a founding partner and Washington correspondent for the news site Puck, and her analysis of Russia has been a must-read ever since Putin invaded Ukraine. ![]() In fact, just two days before Antov's death, someone traveling with him died in the same hotel of an apparent heart attack. Others tumbled downstairs or have been struck with fatal illnesses. At least a dozen Russian businessmen have died mysteriously in the last year. Sausage magnate Pavel Antov fell to his death in India on Christmas Eve. I haven't been following it, so I can't offer an opinion on their reporting.This recent headline might sound familiar - Russian oligarch dies after hotel fall. Ioffe also reminds us that there is no guarantee that a post-Putin Russian government will be better than his.Īnd she refers to the online publication Meduza ( ) as a good independent journalistic sources on Russian developments. Also when you look at the level of success of sanctions in Cuba, Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela, you might start to wonder exactly how effective even "targeted" economics sanctions can be in getting a country to act against what it conceives as vital national interests. While people in the West think the sanctions will really put a lot of popular pressure on the government, she reminds us that actually Russians are used to adjusting to hard times. Ioffe expresses skepticism about whether the economic sanctions will pressure Russia into calling off the war in an immediate sense. It's safe to say that not all Russians experienced it as a benign experience. In the Cold War triumphalist view that is the default assumption for American pundits, Russia back then was hitting some speed bumps on the way to the blessings of capitalism and Western-style democracy. A more serious aspect could be the fuel crisis which has left many thousands, particularly in the far east, without heating in the run-up to that region's extremely fierce winter. Deaths by starvation are most unlikely to occur in significant numbers but a further deterioration in dietary quality is very much on the cards. In the meantime ordinary Russians face hardship this winter. If any lesson is to be learned from the horrible mess in which Russia finds itself, it is that turning a blind eye to corruption simply does not pay dividends. One leading commentator, while admitting that US policy in Russia had failed, came up with the bizarre message that "just because it failed does not mean it was wrong". The shock therapists have blamed the International Monetary Fund for what has happened. Western institutions and countries believed that Russia's economy was improving and they believed this simply because it was what they wanted to believe.Įconomic shock therapists who, only a few months ago, were claiming that their measures had been successful, are now denying that these measures were ever implemented in the first place. If Russia was the addict as far as the abuse of financial aid was concerned, then the West was the pusher. "Shock therapy" was heavily influenced by Western advisers and supported by the Clinton Administration. Here's an unsigned 1998 account from the Irish Times related to the 1998 Russian financial crisis, After the failure of shock therapy what hope for Russia now?. Although there's no serious argument about the basic facts. It's very widely recognized in the West how traumatic the "shock therapy" economic transition in Russia in the 1990s was. Her account of that period doesn't exactly proceed from the conventional assumptions in the US and Europe. Much of this interview deals with Russia, including some reflections on the 1990s. But while Ioffe takes a very dim view of Putin and his foreign policies, she's not a New Cold War hack. ![]() Critical listening is always in order on these things.
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