I have recently been watching online interviews conducted by veteran reporters at The Washington Post.
The best of them so far was the interview of Michael McFaul, former Ambassador to Russia by David Ignatius.
McFaul speaks with great authority about Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin, and the war in Ukraine. McFaul talks about the importance of passing new aid to Ukraine and appeals directly to Speaker Mike Johnson to let the funding bill come to a vote.
Ignatius asks him what additional sanctions might be imposed on Russia to deter its brutal invasion of Ukraine. He says the U.S. and Europe should transfer to Ukraine the billions of Russian assets that are now frozen.
When asked about the future of Russia, McFaul says that Russia is in decline now because it has driven out a million of its “best and brightest,” who have fled to other countries. If Putin had turned to democracy in 2000, he said, Russia would now be one of the richest nations in the world.
Michael McFaul on Russian presidential election and Alexei Navalny’s legacy
The death of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has sparked worldwide condemnation and renewed questions about political freedom in Russia. On Monday, March 4 at 1:00 p.m. ET, former U.S. ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul joins The Post’s David Ignatius to assess Navalny’s legacy, Russia’s upcoming presidential election and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
By Washington Post Live
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Transcript: World Stage: The Future of Russia with Michael McFaul
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you again and forever for the many ways you continue to educate us all, putting so many great resources at our fingertips!
Thank you for this interview which should serve as a cautionary tale for the US. Going down the authoritarian road would kill innovation and force the best and brightest to leave. We see this to some degree in authoritarian Florida. Teachers will not come to Florida to be a low paid scapegoat. College age women are looking at other states that support body autonomy. The war on Disney is giving companies a second thought about relocating to Florida. Authoritarianism is bad for innovation, the economy and personal liberty.
My favorite quote that I will revise to reveal what will happen to the United States if Traitor Trump or a Christian Nationalist MAGARINO gets elected president.
“If Putin had turned to democracy in 2000, he said, Russia would now be one of the richest nations in the world.”
If Traitor Trump hadn’t been elected president in 2024, the United States would still be the richest, most powerful democracy in the world like it had been for a century or more, instead of a bankrupt, diseased, dystopian hybrid theo-kleptocracy, with the first trillionaire on the planet as its first dictator.
In 2014, when Putin seized Crimea he justified the seizure by claiming that the people there were ethnic Russians and belonged with Russia — just like Hitler had invaded the Sudetenland region of the nation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, claiming that the people there were actually Germans and belonged with Germany.
Instead of defending Czechoslovakia, the western nations of Europe, plus England, fell all over themselves concocting “The Munich Agreement” that let Hitler keep what he had stolen.
Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who was one of the “leaders” who signed the Munich Agreement, declared that the Agreement would bring “peace for our time” — but when Winston Churchill read the Agreement, he gravely noted: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor — and now you shall have war.”
Churchill was right: Hitler had no intention of stopping with the takeover of Czechoslovakian territory — Hitler had declared that his goal was to re-establish the former German Reich, just like Putin has declared that he wants to restore the former Soviet Union empire. Hitler called his empire “TheThird Reich” and less than 12 months after the “peace-for-our-time” treaty was signed, Hitler launched World War II to create the Reich Empire, because to Hitler the Munich peace agreement only showed the weakness and fearfulness of Western nations.
Putin saw the west’s failure to take physical action against his seizure of Crimea the same way Hitler saw the Munich Agreement. And, like Hitler, Putin didn’t stop with Crimea — and he won’t stop even with seizing all of Ukraine: Putin has already declared that Lithuania is “a threat” to Russia. Little Lithuania is next on Putin’s list. But Lithuania is a NATO member…”and now you shall have war.”
Or, of course, NATO can just let little Lithuania fall to Putin because “it isn’t worth it.” That would not only be the end of NATO, it would be the beginning of Putin’s conquest of Europe, the end of America’s leadership, and it would sink the U.S. economy.
If America and European democracies fail to immediately arm Ukraine with everything it needs to drive Putin out of all Ukrainian territory — including Crimea — Putin won’t stop, and there will be a far, far wider world war.
U.S. Army General Patraeus, who also served as the Director of the CIA and knows what’s really going on in this world, points out that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “as right versus wrong as it gets in this world. Here we have a brutal, unprovoked invasion at the orders of a kleptocratic leader who denies Ukraine’s right to exist. And keep in mind that Putin won’t stop there. [Driving Russia out of Ukraine] is in our cold, hard national interest.”
And yet, Putin’s Pals in the House of Representatives would rather play politics instead of pay attention to our nation’s interest. They are traitors to America’s national interest.