Decisions made by Russian President Vladimir Putin were “justified” and successfully stabilized his nation, former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev wrote in Time magazine, but have proven costly in the longer term.“In the initial phase, certain measures of authoritarian nature—a kind of manual control—were justified,” Gorbachev wrote in Time’s annual 100 most influential people edition, published online Thursday. “The costs: a diminished parliament, judiciary and civil society and less media independence. With time, the flaws became more evident.”Gorbachev said Putting arrived in office, his second time as president, with a crisis inherited from his predecessor. But Putin’s solutions to that …read more
Source: POLITICO – U.S. Edition