{"id":1324316,"date":"2025-11-23T14:44:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T12:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/stupid-bunch-of-suckers-how-modern-geopolitics-works\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T07:29:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T05:29:27","slug":"stupid-bunch-of-suckers-how-modern-geopolitics-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/stupid-bunch-of-suckers-how-modern-geopolitics-works\/","title":{"rendered":"A Stupid Bunch of Suckers: Inside the Real Rules of Modern Power Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: Author’s Facebook<\/a> page<\/em><\/p>\n

Trump and Putin operate with astonishingly primitive methods \u2014 yet they work. The so-called 28-point \u201cpeace plan\u201d put forward by the two leaders repeats, almost word for word, the crude, street-level racketeer logic familiar in Kyiv in the 1990s.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One day, my friend Lyokha ran into the dormitory, breathless with joy<\/em>, to tell us how he\u2019d been shaken down for 10 dollars \u2014 and how they could<\/em> have made him pay 50.<\/p>\n

In reality, it was a crude gangster scam in which the thugs deliberately demanded an absurd, unaffordable sum from the victim. They would invent some supposed offense, like you greeted someone \u201cthe wrong way,\u201d and name a completely unrealistic amount that no one could pay.<\/p>\n

While the victim was imagining being taken to the woods or forced to sell his apartment, the gangsters would suddenly announce that, because he was a \u201cGOOD guy\u201d (Trump even uses the same vocabulary!), they were giving him a 90-percent \u201cDISCOUNT\u201d and offering a more \u201creasonable\u201d sum instead.<\/p>\n\t\t