To the editor:
Re: “Is Putin demonization really about gas?” Aug. 8.
Geoff Olson’s article ends with: “We don’t have a Missile gap, we have a reality gap.” Perhaps it is Mr. Olson who suffers from reality gap.
The USSR’s nuclear superiority was best demonstrated after 1990 when Russian occupying forces in Czechoslovakia were leaving with thousands of nuclear warheads no one even knew existed.
Perhaps it is Mr. Olson who should dial down a bit on his anti-Western demagoguery, the very system he grew up in complete freedom, that his counterparts in USSR-occupied Europe did not even dream of.
Western sanctions target Putin’s oligarchs, not ordinary Russians. It is Mr. Putin who last week stopped imports of western food, directly hurting his own people.
Mr. Putin is a product of the system he grew up in as a high-ranking KGB officer in Berlin during the Cold War.
There is no need to “demonize” Mr. Putin. With his own cold war tactics, he does well on his own.
George Vytasek,
Vancouver
