Comments by "Martin Maat" (@MartinMaat) on "Putin taunts the West in speech" video.

If any of the stories about empty stores in Russia is true, this little performance should primarily anger his own people. So either he is vain and not thinking straight or we get fed overly optimistic stories about the impact of sanctions. I don't know at this point what to believe.
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@willtellall638 That is crazy talk. Mike? Is that you?
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Superbabykid You are not making sense. The disaster in Afghanistan was the getting in part, not the getting out part. The Ukrainian mishap was setup by Europe and Putin, the US had nothing to do with that.
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@bubeni_ What part of Russia do you live?
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@bubeni_ We may have a distorted picture but this goes both ways. The truth is we hardly ever compare anything to Russia when it is about economy. We have Africa for those comparisons. We compare to Russia when another journalist is murdered or political opponent is poisoned or misinformation is spread around the public by state television or Putin and his allies steal billions from their own country or gays are beat up or some neighboring country is demolished and civilians are raped and murdered by the Russian army. That is when we say we are glad we do not live in Russia. And that is why we now want to throw you back a couple of decades in history and we want to become independent of any of your products, to make sure none of that BS will ever makes it here.
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Higher Order Reasoning As an economy Russia ranks well after Italy which in turn ranks 4th within the EU. If you regard Russia as European, its econony is average among other European countries. Rubbing the entire EU and rhe US the wrong way is not going to be good for business in Russia, regardless what Putin wants you to believe.
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They say that about Germans actually. Which isn't true either.
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