Putin

In my opinion, if there's any world leader that needs to be treated with extreme caution and suspicion, it's the Russian president Vladimir Putin. It's disappointing to know that my president views this man, who was a KGB spy for twenty years, as someone that he can trust. I also have to admit that it's very suspicious how many connections the white house has tying them to the hostile Russian president. It's horrifying to hear about all of the "accidents" that Putin's political rivals end up encountering. I think that he's a thug, plain and simple. It was right of the nations of the G8 (now G7) to boot Russia out of the group. Their military occupation of Crimea is a blatant display of aggression and Putin is clearly flirting with the line and seeing how much he can get away with. I think that Putin is going to be the president of Russia for the rest of his life. He has a monopoly on the Russian oligarchical support. He is at the top of the food chain of the incredibly corrupt Russian political stage. It's weird to hear about what the Russian people think about their leader. Many of them view him as a sort of strong man that is restoring their country to a power house on the world stage, but to everyone outside of Russia, most see him as a brutal totalitarian dictator. Putin himself said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy in modern history. It's because of that, that I think he wants to make Russia back into an entity like the Soviet Union. He's doing this by all of his military aggression and flexing his muscles to the other leaders of the world. Putin needs to be watched very carefully, because I believe with all my heart that if he were given any opportunity to expand Russia's influence, he would take it every time. There's also the case of the Russian meddling in the 2016 election that should definitely be touched on. While there isn't any concrete evidence that Russians "hacked" the election, it is a well known fact that many Russian employed operatives ran an extremely efficient campaign of misinformation to tilt the scale in Trumps favor. I think that, while these agents weren't technically operating under the direct orders of Vladimir Putin, I believe that he was aware of what was going on and simply didn't do anything because he wanted an American President that would be significantly softer on him than the alternative. Putin is an extremely dangerous individual, and the leading nations of the world need to keep a very close eye on him.