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Comment by School-Cotton | Hacker News Reader

Putin isn’t in any way a communist.

As a former KGB officer wouldn't he be the most likely to want a return to the old ways?

What does the KGB have to do with communism? A lot of countries have had draconian secret police and spy agencies, regardless of whether those countries were communist or not.

For example, the Gestapo in Nazi-era Germany.

It has nothing to do with communism and I didn't say that it does.

I was referring to the single party authoritarian government of the USSR

Sure, but the person I responded to asserted it had to do with communism, so that’s the context I was replying to.

Then I apologize for jumping in the conversation. Either way Putin is evil and Republicans are all traitors for supporting him

This is such an absurd stretch that I don’t think anyone can actually believe it, even if they wanted to.

Can you elaborate?

Congratulations, now can you respond to the contents of the message, instead of jumping on technicalities?

How is whether he is actually a communist relevant to the substance of what I wrote?

The point is that he wasn’t exactly trustworthy to begin with, and an erstwhile enemy. You don’t feel betrayed when your enemy does what you expected him to.

He's an autocrat acting on delusions of empire building. That is the root of Russia invading Ukraine. All the other excuses are ancillary or nonsense (Nazis etc)

True, but unrelated to whether he's a communist. There are authoritarian and libertarian communists but Putin is neither.

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