Putin has finally won

[Hortensis]

13. Americans. Russia's a pissant, underdeveloped country

that exports raw commodities for quick profits instead of developing a manufacturing base. It's made up of poor people and run by criminals. It's likely to stay poor for a long time to come also. Their culture has always been intensely authoritarian, communism merely a secular version.

If we were internally united, we'd have joined with other nations long ago to convince his nervous fellow kleptocrats it was in their interests to remove Putin and stay within their national borders. We came close to that at one point in the Obama/Clinton years. Note that Trump has refused to actually impose the additional sanctions congress has passed but has not been able to remove the old ones that were and are causing real pain.