Andrew Bolt: Russian President Vladamir Putin has changed the world for the better

It’s been a horrific three months, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a positive impact on the world. Here’s how.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has changed the world for the better, according to Andrew Bolt.

In just three months, the world has dramatically changed for the better – as long as Vladimir Putin decides not to end it all with a nuclear bomb.

Three months ago, it seemed the West was weak and the time of dictators was here.

China was so sure of it that it signed a deal with Russia – a “no limits” friendship pact that Russia treated as the go-ahead to invade Ukraine.

China was very cocky back then, announcing there was a change in the balance of world power.

But take a look now. It’s all crumbled around Putin, the Russian tyrant, and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, and the West suddenly looks more united than it has for 20 years.

Russia’s army has been smashed so far in Ukraine, going from feared to despised – and proof that autocrats tend to have terrible soldiers.

The world has changed dramatically for the better and it’s all thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Picture: Alexey Nikolsky.

Meanwhile, its economy is on its knees, thanks to sanctions by the West.

Worse for Putin, even Germany, his best friend in Europe, has finally ditched him.

It wants to stop buying his gas and oil, and last week decided at last to send heavy weapons to Ukraine.

Putin managed to do what he and Xi thought was impossible. He made the West realise freedom is worth fighting for.

And as US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin suggested last week, the West can also see that helping Ukraine smash Russia is a great way to break Russian power for decades.

It’s also a great way to weaken China. Dictator Xi turns out to have made a terrible mistake himself by backing Putin. He’s turned the free West against him, too.

Almost every free country – forget the Solomon Islands – now treats it as a danger.

The world is dividing more clearly into the free and the unfree.

Vladimir Putin made the West realise freedom was worth fighting for. Picture: Natalia Kolesnikova

For Xi, this could not come at a worse time. China’s economy is faltering, and now is being crippled by Xi’s other great vanity project – his insistence that lockdowns are the best way of fighting Covid-19 and prove that authoritarian systems are best.

That worked for a long while. China’s death toll was extremely low and it didn’t go into recession. But now the country that invented lockdowns has still got many of its biggest cities shut down while the West has moved on, protected by better vaccines than China could invent.

China’s image of power is cracking, and Russia’s is smashed already, while the West suddenly looks as good as ever.

Thank you, Vladimir.