Puck News’ Julia Ioffe Laments Russians See Losing 20+ Million People in Defeating Nazis ‘as a Point of Pride’ Not Tragedy

EXCERPT:

IOFFE: "Well, I think what Donald Trump has gotten right is that we don’t have a tremendous amount of leverage over Putin now that we’ve taken off American boots on the ground, right, which understandably, nobody wants to see. But the fact that both Biden, Obama and now Trump have said, 'We’re not doing that,' that's it, that’s the leverage. The sanctions would hurt, but the sanctions have also hurt. It’s just that Russia’s whole thing, especially when you see them valorize and kind of cultivate World War II, in which they lost 27 million people and they don’t see it as a tragedy, they see it as a point of pride, they see the fact that they just go and die, that they’re willing to die and out-suffer the West as a point of pride, that this is — this marks somehow their spiritual superiority over us, over us and the West. And so, yes, the sanctions will hurt. Yes, the Russian economy is, you know, it was roaring this time a year ago, but now interest rates are 21%. Okay? Russia’s spending so much money on defense, it is flooding, flooding its own market with not just defense spending, but also all this cash it’s handing out to people who are signing up to serve. Right? And still, the Russian economy is only — has only grown at 1.4, around 1.8%. They’re now hiding — they’re now hiding demographic data, because what it’s showing is that the Russian population is shrinking because of all the people dying in the war.”