Putin Is Turning Russia Into a Giant North Korea

Tom Friedman: “With his annexation of parts of Ukraine on Friday, Vladimir Putin has set in motion forces that are turning Russia into a giant North Korea. It will be a paranoid, angry, isolated state, but unlike North Korea, the Russian version will be spread over 11 time zones — from the Arctic Sea to the Black Sea and from the edge of free Europe to the edge of Alaska — with thousands of nuclear warheads.”

“None of us have ever known the Russia that a now desperate, back-against-the-wall Putin seems hellbent on delivering — a pariah Russia; a big, humiliated Russia; a Russia that has sent many of its most talented engineers, programmers and scientists fleeing through any exit they can find. This would be a Russia that has already lost so many trading partners that it can survive only as an oil and natural gas colony of China, a Russia that is a failed state, spewing out instability from every pore.”

“Such a Russia would not be just a geopolitical threat. It would be a human tragedy of mammoth proportions.”