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Senator Bernie Sanders has been fighting against the impending billionaire oligarchy with a domestic tour. Senator Sanders has also taken a strong stance in support of Ukraine. On that front, Sanders issued a statement on Monday pushing back against Trump’s pro-Putin propaganda.
Senator Sanders said:
Donald Trump’s attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are a gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump is dividing the Western alliance and undermining Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion. His actions could prolong the crusade by convincing Putin that he can manipulate Trump into a deal with concessions that he could not achieve on the battlefield.
Trump is cozying up to Vladimir Putin, so who is Putin?
Putin is a former Soviet agent who spent 16 years in the KGB, where he learned to manipulate people by playing on their egos, greed, and fears. After the end of the Cold War, Putin was appointed head of the FSB, the successor to Russia’s KGB intelligence agency. In 1999, Putin was appointed prime minister, becoming president when former President Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Putin has ruled Russia ever since.
At the heart of Putin’s government are two forces: corruption and violence.
As the new leader of Russia, Putin, who is now believed to be one of the richest people on earth, consolidated power at home by going after the powerful oligarchs of Russia. He offered them a simple deal: if they granted him unchecked power and shared in the plunder, he would let them steal as much as they wanted from the Russian people. The result: while the vast majority of the Russian population struggles economically, Putin and his fellow oligarchs have stashed away trillions of dollars in offshore tax havens. In the process, Putin crushed Russia’s brief movement toward democracy. He eliminated rivals, cracked down on free speech, and strangled independent media. Political dissidents, investigative journalists, and opposition leaders began turning up dead.
Today, 26 years after taking power, Putin is the unchallenged ruler of Russia. Russian elections are blatantly fraudulent, with Putin’s lackeys barely bothering to hide the rigging. In the latest sham elections, Putin won 88 percent of the “vote” against carefully vetted opposition candidates.
That is Putin’s Russia. There is no freedom of speech. Protests are violently suppressed. Tens of thousands of people are imprisoned for speaking out against their government. The bravest and most prominent dissenters, people like Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov, and Sergei Magnitsky, are directly targeted for assassination. And the billionaire oligarchs only grow richer.
That is the leader Trump defends and admires.
Sanders continued: