Editor’s Note: This is the second essay in a multi-author series on “Getting Russia Right.” Read the first installment by Karina Orlova here, and the second by Carla Anne Robbins here.The Russian tradition of top-down rule has a long history, but Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was not condemned to follow it over the past couple of decades. It was Putin who made the crucial decision to reinforce it further on his return to the Kremlin in 2012 by choosing repression over the cautious economic reforms that had been mooted in the Medvedev presidential interlude. He it was who seized Crimea in …read more
Source: The American Interest
