Putin was in power for around 23 years, during which he completely dulled Western sense of danger by constantly blowing hot, and cold. What Russians call "blow

Putin was in power for around 23 years, during which he completely dulled Western sense of danger by constantly blowing hot, and cold. What Russians call "blowing fuflo" was certainly in use by the time the second flare up of second Chechnya war - 2003. They funded a gazillion of cheap academicians, for-profit journalists, and think tanks with no apparent goal besides just keeping the buzz about it going, no matter what the actual argument was. Basically they reduced the signal-to-noise ratio of sensible political discourse to near none, which then swayed the West into making bad decisions, and assured no high quality leadership can emerge, being outshouted by that cacophonic chorus of random opinion leaders. The inability to take things for what they are, "analysis paralysis," politicians, and business leaders not being able to put a single coherent paragraph without an army of advisers — this is what it is. They don't care what people keep arguing about for as long as they keep talking, and doing nothing.