Quick summary: Putin re-appointed Medvedev, appointed Alexei Kudrin as Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of Russia and Vitalii Mutko as Deputy Prime Minister in charge of construction, he then hosted Bibi Netanyahu in the Kremlin while the latter bombed Syria right before, during and after Netanyahu's visit. Finally, there is the disgraceful zig-zag about the S-300 for Syria: first,
yes we will do it, then,
no we won't. All these events can, and should, be carefully analyzed and explained, but I don't think that it makes sense to deny that most people feel a sense of disappointment over it all (except, of course, the bright geniuses who will claim that they knew all along that Putin was "fake", but this is precisely the "Hollywood-thinking" types on whom any real analysis would be lost in the first place).
I would argue that even those who think that this is no big deal and that nothing terrible happened will not, if they are honest, deny that Putin must have known, without any doubt, that his decisions would be unpopular with the Russian public and that, very uncharacteristically for him, he deliberately chose to ignore his only public opinion and favor other considerations. That is something very new and, I think, something important.
Comment: In theory they may be the "strongest sanctions in history", but in order for them to be effective the ailing EU economies need to abide by them, but as became clear with the anti-Russia sanctions, they have little to benefit and a lot to lose from continuing to follow illogical US diktats:
- Netanyahu's Anti-Iran PowerPoint Moment as Trump Wavers and Europe Turns its Back
- Demented US foreign policy pushes Germany into mutually beneficial deals with China and Russia
- Europe ready to defy US economic sanctions on Iran
- Iran Protests Through the Prism of Geopolitics
Also check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Atlantic Trade War? How Trump Breaking Iran Deal Could Dismantle US Empire