Quotes from David Satter

As Russia faces the future, it has three serious problems: a deteriorating economy, a fratricidal war whose cost is almost certain to increase, and a moral disintegration that may leave the regime without defenders if it faces a serious challenge. Taken together these factors are more than sufficient to undermine the system's stability.

corruption is a symptom of a deeper ill, the disregard for the value of the individual by comparison with the perceived requirements of the state. An attack on corruption that does not address this underlying subservience risks removing one group of corrupt leaders and replacing them with another group that is just as bad.

Westerners become confused because they approach Russia with a Western frame of reference, not realizing that Russia is a universe based on a completely different set of values.

Critical to the credence given in the West to official Russian explanations was an inability to accept the idea that the Yeltsin regime would murder hundreds of its own citizens and terrify the nation to hold on to power. This refusal to believe the unbelievable, however, came at a cost. It crippled Western policy toward Russia, rendering it naïve and ineffectual. From the moment Putin took power, the West maintained an image of Russia that bore no relation to reality.

Until the truth about the apartment bombings is known, the true nature of Russia's postcommunist history cannot be established. At the same time, failing to react to the evidence that the bombings were a government-planned mass crime leaves such provocation as a standing temptation for government leaders. If those responsible are not identified and punished, it will be assumed by those fighting for power in Russia that provocations are a legitimate way to win elections.

Bribery quickly became an integral part of the Russian way of doing business, and the expense of buying a government official was considered the most important part of a new enterprise's starting capital.

Anatoly Chubais, who was Yeltsin's campaign manager at the time, said that "of course" there were violations in the campaign, but if the 1996 vote were to be dismissed as a fraud, "then we automatically have to deem both of President Putin's terms illegitimate along with the presidency of Medvedev. … There would be nothing left of Russia's post-Soviet history.

After the devastation wrought by the Yeltsin era, almost any new leader was likely to be perceived as a potential savior. Russians saw in Putin what they wanted him to be, rather than what he was. He also took power at a moment when the Russian economy started to expand.