gotham_now on Nostr: Your framing isn’t helping you. I didn’t claim to “like” any part of the ...

Your framing isn’t helping you. I didn’t claim to “like” any part of the interview in the sense of supporting Putin. I stated I don’t explicitly.

My judgment was based on how well he articulated his perspective, not that all his claims would bear out as truthful. If you don’t expect leaders, particularly those in a war, to use truth when useful and lies when useful you deserve to be deceived.

That being said, I don’t speak Russian so it’s unclear to me if the translation should have been grandfather. Either way, I thought it was an obvious attempt to paint Zelensky as a hypocrite. I thought the interpretation of WWII’s beginning was odd too. I thought his explanation of Soviet era policy regarding the treatment of Ukrainians as a separate group was odd. I thought his unwillingness to release that reporter was an obvious missed opportunity when you consider the potential gains, but I think that was one of the few instances where his domestic audience concerns overrode his desire to appeal to a foreign audience.

He isn’t a madman, and that’s a narrative disaster for the West.