Читать книгу The Story of Putin - United States Department of Defense - Страница 19

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While working for most of the 1990s in behind-the-scenes positions in St. Petersburg city government or within the Yeltsin bureaucracy in Moscow, Putin could observe from afar the nature of post-Cold War Russian relations around the globe. Too often, the weakened Soviet successor state that became Russia was incapable of influencing global events like its superpower predecessor. The United States and West, operating in a new environment lacking any geostrategic bipolarity, engaged in actions that could only further alienate Russia and its current and future leaders. Though Putin could not directly affect the repeated snubbing that Yeltsin incurred from the West, the memories of how the United States and West treated a weakened Russia would affect how the next generation of Russian leaders viewed their former Cold War opponents. Of the many events in Russian-Western relations during the 1990s, several critical issues shall be examined more thoroughly, issues in which the United States and its allies inadvertently contributed to fomenting anti-Americanism in Russia and justifying anti-Americanism in the eyes of eventual President Putin.