Ukrainian official tells CNN Biden's call with Ukrainian President 'did not go well'

Russia has consolidated control of its gas industry under a cartel which is politically aligned with the state, rather than global finance. They're still capitalist monsters polluting the earth for a quick buck, but they are not for sale the way the west would like them to be.

Putin is doing basically nationalistic capitalism, so only Russian capitalists can exploit Russian workers (and Central Asian immigrants). Which I guess is marginally better for Russians but Wall Street hates that they can't buy up all those Russian assets for themselves. Thus they have demanded that the US government embark on a maximum pressure campaign to open Russia's markets by overthrowing Putin. It has not been working lol

We wanna take things back to the 90s when Western companies owned everything productive in Russia. Just a lil civil war collapse so American companies can plunder.

It's institutional Russophobia that goes back generations. The idea of Russia being a "hotbed of totalitarianism" predates the Soviet Union - before that there was constant hand wringing about the threat of "Czarism".

America is a wing of the British Empire, especially the Progressive/Federalist wing of the ruling class, and the Brits have had an insane rivalry with Russia going back to the 19th century. Aligning with Russia is a non-starter.