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Drawing Putin Into War

The Gist

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Yeltsin's Drinking Problem

Yeltsin was an alcoholic and I've heard stories of him being drunk in the presence of Bill Clinton but how huge a factor was that his alcoholism was he drunk so much that it got in the way of what he and u.s. foreign policy were trying to accomplish? Putin also bears the distinction of having lost Ukraine twice before and if you go back and there was a popular revolution in 2004 after a crooked election where the people of Ukraine stood up and said you can't treat us this way. He saw the invasion in February of 2022 is a chance to basically clear the slate and get Ukraine back and remove this huge black mark and it's just an epic miscalculation.

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