Tag Putin

Angry Taxi Driver

Commenting on Putin’s “annexation speech” on September 30, Shaun Walker wrote in the Guardian: Today, he offered an angrier but less coherent denunciation of the west, more angry taxi driver than head of state. If you’ve ever heard a post-Soviet…

A matter of reputation

In the New Statesman, Katie Stallard reviews Putin: His Life and Times by Philip Short. Referring to Putin’s tenure as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg under Anatoly Sobchak, the reviewer notes: As Sobchak’s deputy, Putin earned a reputation for discipline,…

No foundation in law or morality

Last weekend, Bloomberg published Max Hastings‘s long-term view of the Russo-Ukrainian war: Yet it seems hard to consider Russian President Vladimir Putin as anything other than a force for evil. He is personally responsible for tens of thousands of deaths…

Blame it on the CIA

Robert Coalson on Twitter: I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. In 20 years, some Russian demagogue will be explaining to Russians that Putin was a CIA plot aimed at bringing the country to its knees. Hear, hear! But…

Deprogramming

It sometimes seems to me that Putinist propaganda has turned millions of Russians into mindless haters with barely a trace of empathy for other human beings. Since 2014, the Kremlin has depicted patriotic Ukrainians as vicious, quasi-Nazi nationalists – in…

Operation Eviction?

In a recent NYT column, Fiona Hill gave a convincing summary of the Kremlin’s strategy: This time, Mr. Putin’s aim is bigger than closing NATO’s “open door” to Ukraine and taking more territory — he wants to evict the United…

Fiona Hill and the two presidents

Fiona Hill’s new book, There Is Nothing for You Here, went on sale last week – five and a half years after Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin had been published (co-authored with Clifford Gaddy). Hill served as the national…

Age is a cunning beast

Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign made a big deal of Joe Biden’s advanced age, claiming he was too senile to be president. The Kremlin’s propagandists in the media, both traditional and social, rushed to ridicule Biden as well, along the lines…

Russia’s true leader

Oleg Kashin in the New York Times today (“Aleksei Navalny Is Russia’s True Leader“): Now, after getting rid of all his opponents, real and imaginary, Mr. Putin finds himself alone. Like the queen in a Russian fairy tale, who every…