economy rebounded with vigor. putin s petrostate was rich. with that change came greater confidence, ambition and even expansion. putin began to do what perhaps he always wanted to do. retrieve the russian-speaking lands that were part not of the soviet union but the older russian empire. putin sees himself not as a soviet commisar but a russian czar in the tradition of his hero peter the great. perhaps what changed was not putin but the circumstances. when he could, he was aggressive. this year, he acted because, again, oil and gas prices were sky high. the west seemed internally divided and weak appear. and europe in particular had become dependent on russian energy. when he thought he had power, we can see what he wanted. total control over all of ukraine. and when he couldn t get that, we see the viciousness with which he has waged war on
kazakhstan has been something of a poster child for successful techno authoritarianism and a model of a successful petrostate. in the past, they ve been able to take protests that are local in origin or very specific and kind of buy them off. what s really been different this time is just how widespread in geography they are and kind of the lack of focus. up until wednesday, these very much looked like the kinds of protests that you would expect in a post covid environment where people are dissatisfied with corruption and price hikes and the government sort of treated them that way. they were trying to buy off or find scapegoats for these things. it really changed on wednesday. suddenly we saw both in the crowds a focus really on nursultan nazarbayev, the first president, we saw the current president, tokayev, make an effort to sort of put the blame on nazarbayev, started a purge of those. so i think, you know, the russians are in media
reinforces what the administration is doing. it does make it mandatory, it does put it in legislative language, and it does show a unified strength here. as far as putin goes, i don t think he knows what he s going to do. i think he s calculating what price he would pay if he went in. i think he s watching the european union and our president and state department. and i think he s calculating, again, is he going to pay a big price if he goes in or not? i think that s why we need to go ahead, turn it up a notch or two, send another shockwave into their economy. we all know they have an incredibly weak economy there. they re basically an autocratic petrostate. again, i m afraid that we re sounding and acting slightly timid right now. we need to turn the volume up. all right. and i just want to one final point, president obama, we re getting new poll numbers today, in terms of his handling of the ukraine crisis, 57% say they
reversed ten years ago. this is great. someone drew a blueprint and say we need an import plan to import national gas. they built it. guess what happened? they re trying to recoup that money. it s the only way. ten years ago we were paying $11 for natural gas and getting it from the saudis at $3. now it s reversed and everybody is saying it s a good idea. i promise you, i ve traded this stuff for 25 years. you get five, six, seven years down the road, that market condition will not exist. it can t. by definition it can t. this is exactly the point, right? the time horizon for all these decisions. we have a crisis right now. everyone s talking about, well, we have to build these things and frack more and ship the gas across. what you re saying, guys, those price conditions will not pertain when this happens. they can t by necessity. besides that, you have this idea, what is the vision the republicans have for this country to become the kind of petrostate we resent out of