That’s the thing about today: People don’t remember that all through the 1990s, America meddled in Russia’s politics in just about every way you can imagine: it helped fix elections, flooded the country with untraceable money, secured international aid to help “our guys” stay in power, funded opposition activists, whitewashed horrible human rights abuses...you name it, America did it. Hell, Clinton’s Treasury Department even wrote presidential decrees. They also helped design Russia’s government apparatus and capital markets structures.

It’s hard to imagine a more direct control over a foreign country’s political system — short of a straight-up physical occupation.

...Millions died premature deaths. The Lancet estimated that 4 million people died [excess deaths] just in the first half of the 1990s

America — at a moment when it could have done pretty much anything in Russia — went with the scummiest, most barbaric option possible. It callously oversaw mass murder and theft and plunder only seen in times of war. And forget taking responsibility for it, no one in power has even acknowledged that it happened.

This is why I've always laughed at the hilarious russiagate accusations. The Russians themselves find these accusations incredibly insulting -- while they have ample justification to do so to avoid a return to their prior position, they would prefer to see themselves as the "better men". And the part that makes it worst is that Americans are totally unaware of how bad the Russians got screwed by the US; this has lead to a sort of national inferiority complex which enables some of the worst abuses of the Putin regime.