Throughout 1990s Yeltsin allowed massive looting of Russia, even let his US pals run his 1996 re-election campaign. When Yeltsin resigned, his hand-picked replacement was Putin-The Hindu, Radyuhin, 3/20/2008, 10/9/2016

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Yeltsin’s “policies perfectly suited the Western agenda for Russia, a superpower-turned economic and military weakling, a subservient client state and a source of cheap energy and minerals…In sticking labels on Russian leaders, the West outrageously ignores the opinion of the Russian people....If Russia could carry out a peaceful transition from the Soviet regime to democracy, why should other countries be bombed [by the US] at every opportunity for want of democracy?"

Image, 9/21/1993, “Yeltsin reached for a cup of tea to show Russians he was not drunk,“ says English speaking announcer during Yeltsin’s announcement that he was dissolving parliament. Screen shot from video.
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March 20, 2008, “Why the West loved Yeltsin and hates Putin," TheHindu.com, Vladimir Radyuhin, updated 10/9/2016  

“One reason why Yeltsin was the West’s darling–while Mr. Putin is the target of virulent attacks–was that his policies perfectly suited the Western agenda for Russia, a superpower-turned economic and military weakling, a subservient client state and a source of cheap energy and minerals. By contrast, Russia’s resurgence under Mr. Putin is seen as upsetting the global balance of power and threatening the U.S. unipolar model. 
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But there is a deeper reason….Mr. Putin steered Russia along its own path of democracy building. Mr. Putin’s “controlled democracy” involves centralisation of power, government control over most electronic and some printed media, and Kremlin-supervised grooming of political parties. This policy helped to curb the chaos of the 1990s and bring about political stability that has underpinned economic growth.… 

The West has denied Mr. Putin’s Russia any democratic credential because it “challenges the prerogative of the dominant democratic powers, in practice the U.S., to judge what is and what is not democratic,” says Russia expert Vlad Sobell of the Daiwa Institute of Research…. 

The rise of new Russia has undermined America’s self-arrogated right to decide what is good and what is evil, to award marks for good or bad behaviour, and to impose “democratic transformation” on other nations, either by war as in Iraq, or through “colour revolutions” as in Georgia and Ukraine.  

If Mr. Putin’s Russia is accepted as an emerging democracy, rather than as a successor to the “evil empire,” it will be difficult to justify the new containment policy the U.S. has set in train, surrounding Russia with a ring of military bases and missile interceptors. Nor would one be able to easily dismiss Moscow’s [accurate] criticism of the aggressive and arrogant U.S. behaviour across the world. 

As Mr. Putin asked in his famous Munich speech, if Russia could carry out a peaceful transition from the Soviet regime to democracy, why should other countries be bombed [by the US] at every opportunity for want of democracy? Hence the Herculean effort of Western opinion-makers to paint everything Mr. Putin does in evil colours. 

The U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights in 2007 mounted the harshest attack yet on the state of freedom in Russia, while the U.S. Freedom House [a hateful US government regime change group] listed it as one of the several “energy-rich dictatorships.” [Advocate of US taxpayer funded mass murder] Republican presidential candidate John McCain has accused Mr. Putin of “trying to restore the old Russian empire,” and “perpetuating himself in power” by installing his “puppet” Dmitry Medvedev in the Kremlin.  

In sticking labels on Russian leaders, the West outrageously ignores the opinion of the Russian people. Russians showed what they thought of Yeltsin’s legacy when they voted out of Parliament twice in recent years the liberal parties that had supported his policies in the 1990s. They demonstrated their support for Mr. Putin’s policies when they triumphantly re-elected him for a second term in 2004 and when they overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Medvedev in March 2008.  

Mr. Putin bluntly told the West that its criticism of his policies would not induce his successor to strike a softer posture in foreign policy. “I am long accustomed to the label by which it is difficult to work with a former KGB agent,” Mr. Putin said at a recent press conference. “Dmitry Medvedev will be free from having to prove his liberal views. But he is no less a Russian nationalist than me, in the good sense of the word, and I do not think our partners will find it easier to deal with him.” 

For his part, Mr. Medvedev, while pledging that “freedom in all its manifestations–personal freedom, economic freedom and, finally, freedom of expression”–would be “at the core of our politics,” said democratic values would be adopted in line with Russia’s “national tradition.””
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Added: US was thrilled to interfere in Russia’s election in 1996. The “[US] government-sponsored project to subvert the will of voters in another country–a supremely successful piece of political vandalism on a global scale:”……………

[Yeltsin Time cover, 7/15/1996: “Yanks to the Rescue"] 

8/19/2018, “How to interfere in a foreign election," Boston Globe, Stephen Kinzer, opinion 

“For one of the world’s major powers to interfere systematically in the presidential politics of another country is an act of brazen aggression. Yet it happened. Sitting in a distant capital, political leaders set out to assure that their favored candidate won an election against rivals who scared them. They succeeded. Voters were maneuvered into electing a president who served the interest of the intervening power. This was a well-coordinated, [US] government-sponsored project to subvert the will of voters in another country–a supremely successful piece of political vandalism on a global scale.  

Four months before the [1996] election, Clinton arranged for the International Monetary Fund to give Russia a $10.2 billion injection of cash. Yeltsin used some of it to pay for election-year raises and bonuses, but much quickly disappeared into the foreign bank accounts of Russian oligarchs. The message was clear: Yeltsin knows how to shake the Western money tree. In case anyone missed it, Clinton came to Moscow a few weeks later to celebrate [the $10.2 billion cash injection] with his Russian partner [Yeltsin]. Oligarchs flocked to Yeltsin’s side. American diplomats persuaded one of his rivals to drop out of the presidential race in order to improve his chances.  

Four American political consultants moved to Moscow to help direct Yeltsin’s campaign. The campaign paid them $250,000 per month for advice on “sophisticated methods of polling, voter contact and campaign organization.” They organized focus groups and designed advertising messages aimed at stoking voters’ fears of civil unrest. When they saw a CNN report from Moscow saying that voters were gravitating toward Yeltsin because they feared unrest, one of the consultants shouted in triumph: “It worked! The whole strategy worked. They’re scared to death!”

[Image: “The conflict between President Boris Yeltsin and the State Duma in 1993 ended with [Yeltsin] the shelling of the Russian White House. Source: Itar-Tass”] 

 Yeltsin won the [1996] election with a reported 54 percent of the vote. The count was suspicious and Yeltsin had wildly violated campaign spending limits, but American groups, some funded in part by Washington, rushed to pronounce the election fair. The New York Times called it “a victory for Russia.” In fact, it was the opposite: a victory by a foreign power that wanted to place its candidate in the Russian presidency. 

American interference in the 1996 Russian election was hardly secret. On the contrary, the press reveled in our ability to shape the politics of a country we once feared. When Clinton maneuvered the IMF into giving Yeltsin and his cronies $10.2 billion, the Washington Post approved: “Now this is the right way to serve Western interests….It’s to use the politically bland but powerful instrument of the International Monetary Fund.” 

After Yeltsin won, Time put him on the cover—holding an American flag. Its story was headlined, “Yanks to the Rescue: The Secret Story of How American Advisors Helped Yeltsin Win.” The story was later made into a movie called “Spinning Boris.”

[Yeltsin Time cover, 7/15/1996: “Yanks to the Rescue,” Time Magazine Boris Yeltsin cover, July 15, 1996. Re-published 6/24/2001, “Rescuing Boris,” Time, Michael Kramer] 
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This was the first direct interference in a presidential election in the history of US-Russia relations. It produced bad results. Yeltsin opened his country’s assets to looting on a mass scale. He turned the Chechen capital, Grozny, into a wasteland.  ........  

Standards of living in Russia fell dramatically. Then, at the end of 1999, plagued by health problems, he shocked his country and the world by resigning. As his final act, he named his successor: a little-known intelligence officer named Vladimir Putin. It is a delightful irony that shows how unwise it can be to interfere in another country’s politics. If the United States had not crashed into a presidential election in Russia 22 years ago, we almost certainly would not be dealing with Putin today.” 
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“Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.” 
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Added:  

After breakup of the Soviet Union US elites believed Russia was their personal property, “ours to lose.”

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Added: US Intel Russiagate “assessment,” 1/6/2017, US intel imagines that a global “liberal democratic order” exists and that the US “leads” it on behalf US taxpayers who’ve never voted to approve a US elite led and US taxpayer funded global dictatorship. US taxpayers have been converted to slaves and there's nothing they can do about it. If openly lawless US elites make up all the rules, who is left to supervise and correct the US when it goes outside the “order?” Answer: No one, as UK’s Chatham House observed but didn’t complain about in 2015: “Challenges to the Rules-Based International Order," Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs:

“For a system based on rules to have effect, these rules must be visibly observed by their principal and most powerful advocates. In this respect, the decision by the George W. Bush administration to invade Iraq in 2003 under a contested UN authorization continues to cast a long shadow over America’s claim to be the principal defender of a rules-based international system. Questioning the legitimacy of US leadership has not eased under Barack Obama, despite his more multilateral approach to problem-solving and reticence in using overt military force….The continued use of presidential authority under ‘war on terrorism’ directives to carry out lethal drone strikes in the Middle East and Pakistan; and the exposure by Edward Snowden of the way US intelligence services used the dominance of US technology companies over the internet to carry out espionage – all have left the United States vulnerable to the accusation that it is as selective as any country about when it does and does not abide by the international norms and rules that it expects of others.”… 

With no higher authority than the US, where do ordinary Americans go for redress? Answer: Nowhere. They’re trapped. To US elites, everyone on the planet exists only to submit to them. Like Putin, ordinary US citizens don't accept their slave designation. “The fundamental issue for Washington is that Russia is no longer a vassal for American imperialism. That’s why there will be no reset. There will only be reset when American imperialism is replaced by a law-abiding, genuinely democratic US government.” US Intel 1/6/2017 delusional opening statement says Russia seeks to “undermine the US-led liberal democratic order:” 

Jan. 6, 2017, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US elections,” ICA, Intelligence Community Assessment 

page ii, “Key Judgments” 

“Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order.”…
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Added: About the Mueller Report: “None of those [Mueller report] headline assertions are supported by the report’s evidence or other publicly available sources….Further the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party’s legal counsel to submit redacted records, meaning CrowdStrike and not the government decided what could be revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking.” 

July 5, 2019, “CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claim,” Aaron Mate, Real Clear Investigations 

“While the 448-page Mueller report found no conspiracy between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, it offered voluminous details to support the sweeping conclusion that the Kremlin worked to secure Trump’s victory. The report claims that the interference operation occurred “principally” on two fronts: Russian military intelligence officers hacked and leaked embarrassing Democratic Party documents, and a government-linked troll farm orchestrated a sophisticated and far-reaching social media campaign that denigrated Hillary Clinton and promoted Trump. 

But a close examination of the report shows that none of those headline assertions are supported by the report’s evidence or other publicly available sources. They are further undercut by investigative shortcomings and the conflicts of interest of key players involved: 
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*The report uses qualified and vague language to describe key events, indicating that Mueller and his investigators do not actually know for certain whether Russian intelligence officers stole Democratic Party emails, or how those emails were transferred to WikiLeaks. 

*The report’s timeline of events appears to defy logic. According to its narrative, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the publication of Democratic Party emails not only before he received the documents but before he even communicated with the source that provided them. 

*There is strong reason to doubt Mueller’s suggestion that an alleged Russian cutout called Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen emails to Assange. 

*Mueller’s decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims Russia was not behind the hack – suggests an unwillingness to explore avenues of evidence on fundamental questions. 

*U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer servers because they did not analyze those servers themselves. Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike, a private contractor for the DNC that was not a neutral party, much as “Russian dossier” compiler Christopher Steele, also a DNC contractor, was not a neutral party. This puts two Democrat-hired contractors squarely behind underlying allegations in the affair---a key circumstance that Mueller ignores. 

*Further, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party’s legal counsel to submit redacted records, meaning CrowdStrike and not the government decided what could be revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking. 

*Mueller’s report conspicuously does not allege that the Russian government carried out the social media campaign. Instead it blames, as Mueller said in his closing remarks, “a private Russian entity” known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA). 

*Mueller also falls far short of proving that the Russian social campaign was sophisticated, or even more than minimally related to the 2016 election. As with the collusion and Russian hacking allegations, Democratic officials had a central and overlooked hand in generating the alarm about Russian social media activity. 

*John Brennan, then director of the CIA, played a seminal and overlooked role in all facets of what became Mueller’s investigation: the suspicions that triggered the initial collusion probe; the allegations of Russian interference; and the intelligence assessment that purported to validate the interference allegations that Brennan himself helped generate. Yet Brennan has since revealed himself to be, like CrowdStrike and Steele, hardly a neutral party--in fact a partisan with a deep animus toward Trump. 

None of this means that the Mueller report’s core finding of “sweeping and systematic” Russian government election interference is necessarily false. But his report does not present sufficient evidence to substantiate it. This shortcoming has gone overlooked in the partisan battle [actually both parties would be happy to get rid of Trump] over two more highly charged aspects of Mueller’s report: potential Trump-Russia collusion and Trump’s potential obstruction of the resulting investigation. As Mueller prepares to testify before House committees later this month, the questions surrounding his claims of a far-reaching Russian influence campaign are no less important. They raise doubts about the genesis and perpetuation of Russiagate and the performance of those tasked with investigating it.”…





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