One should understand that this process "didn't happen in a vacuum" and was "the byproduct of a quarter century of dedicated work on behalf of Vladimir Putin for Russia and the Russian people," the ex-US Marine Corps intelligence officer said.
"You see, the root of all of this passion for Russia comes from the decade of the 1990s, the time when the very existence of the Russian state, of the Russian people, of the Russian nation was being called into question. It came in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was born of the dark times of the failure of perestroika," which saw former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's "failed gambit to transition from a communist society into one where Western market capitalism could prevail," Ritter noted.
"Vladimir Putin was a product of the 1990s. He saw the reality of the 1990s and he understood that Russia could never allow itself to go back to those times. He understood that if Russia didn't break free of the path that it was headed on during the decade of the 90s, there would be no Russia," Ritter concluded.