https://www.afr.com/world/europe/biden-visits-us-troops-in-poland-20220326-p5a857 NYT In an interview more than two decades ago, Vladimir Putin described his younger self, with a hint of self-congratulation, as “a hooligan.” When the interviewer asked if he was exaggerating about his tendency to get into brawls as a schoolboy, Putin took offence. “You are trying to insult me,” he said. “I was a real thug.” Russian President Vladimir Putin. AP Masha Gessen, a Russian American journalist and Moscow native, recounts this exchange in a 2012 biography, “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin,” which was praised as “part psychological profile, part conspiracy study” inThe New York Times Book Review. To Gessen, Putin’s unabashed description of himself as “a thug” was key to his self-image: someone who could not be bullied, who would lash out unpredictably if he felt slighted and who relished violence. Understanding Putin and the forces that shaped him has become an urgent global concern, as leaders around the world try to determine his motivations in launching an unprovoked and disastrous invasion of Ukraine, how to best engage with him and how the conflict might evolve. So far, the military assault appears to be a catastrophic misstep, one that has resulted in crippling economic sanctions and heavy military losses for Russia, as well as mass civilian casualties and destruction in the very Ukrainian cities Putin claims he wants to “liberate.” To all this, Putin has said, repeatedly, in public comments that the war is going “according to plan.” As the conflict escalates, the question of what is driving Putin has become an increasingly perplexing one, with no obvious answers but with enormous consequences: The war will end, some experts say, when the Russian president allows it to end. Gessen set out to understand the Russian leader’s mindset more than a decade ago, first in an article forVanity Fair, then in “The Man Without a Face.” Tracing Putin’s rise from a petulant and unruly schoolboy to a KGB operative who ascended to the Russian presidency, Gessen examined the post-Soviet political, cultural and economic forces that enabled Putin’s rise and the way he vilified the West to solidify his grip on power. After Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, Gessen wrote a postscript summarising Putin’s increasingly aggressive stance toward Western democracies and his evolution from “a bureaucrat who had accidentally been entrusted with a huge country into a megalomaniacal dictator who believed he was on a civilisational mission.” In a recent phone interview, Gessen, a staff writer forThe New Yorker, discussed several books that offer insights into Putin’s psychology, as well as titles that illuminate the cultural and geopolitical context that helped shape Putin’s Russia. Below are Gessen’s recommendations, which have been lightly edited for clarity. ‘Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped.’ By Garry Kasparov. PublicAffairs, 2015. Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster, is a longtime critic of Putin. “Kasparov thinks about life as chess. And he looks at this as a series of plays. He doesn’t look at Putin’s psychology so much as he looks at the logic of his actions and says, ‘OK, well, this is how we game it out.’ And it is not uplifting. I mean, the book is not recent, and he was quite sure then that Putin was at war with the West at that point. “It’s funny, because one didn’t really have to press in to see that, one just had to pay attention and not be beholden to the conventional wisdom that says, ‘but that’s not possible; that’s crazy; he doesn’t really mean it.’ We’re going to look at this period between 2012 and 2022 as a period when there’s a lot of that happening, when the war was slowly ramping up in plain view and most of the world was in denial about it.” ‘First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President.’ By Vladimir Putin. PublicAffairs, 2000. A compilation of interviews with Putin published in the United States in 2000. “I found it incredibly illuminating because, if you read it as a document of what this man wants to tell the world about himself, you learn a lot. It’s not a very long book, and it doesn’t have a lot of variety, but he recounts three different fights that he had. One was when he was a kid and he felt mistreated by a teacher, if I remember correctly. One was when he was a student and one was when he was a young officer. And in all three cases, he lashes out. He basically loses his temper, and then he goes quiet for a bit, and then he strikes again. “This is what it communicates: that this is somebody who has no desire to control his temper. He thinks of himself as somebody who will lash out, somebody who’s vengeful. Somebody who likes to strike out of the blue, but also — and this is the thing that I’m most worried about now — he will go quiet for a bit, and then he will strike again. That’s actually an M.O. that is important to his self-conception.” ‘Nature’s Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources.’ By Alexander Etkind. Polity, 2021. This book examines how civilisation and politics have been shaped by resources like coal, oil and grain. “I recommend anything by Alexander Etkind, who is a cultural historian of Russia. His latest book is called ‘Nature’s Evil,’ and it’s a cultural history of natural resources. It’s not entirely limited to Russia, but I think it actually goes a very long way to explaining how Russia works.” ‘The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes.’ By Balint Magyar and Balint Madlovics. CEU Press, 2020. Magyar, a social scientist and former politician, looks at the ways in which postcommunist regimes have given rise to autocrats who have cracked down on media and political dissent. “Anything by Balint Magyar. He is a Hungarian social scientist, and he has this tome, it’s this huge book called ‘The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes.’ It’s a little on the technical side, but it’s so incredibly illuminating. I think my favourite book of his is called ‘The Post-Communist Mafia State,’ which pretends to be about Hungary, but is the best book for understanding postcommunist Russia and how the regime works.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Putin's taking half a loaf, declare eastern half independent. The west baited Putin into this mess, elites are blood suckers.
Putin saw weakness in America the day biden was elected and he is taking advantage of that weakness. That is the whole story in a nut shell.
you have no idea what you are talking about. Russia’s economy was dead already. Any idiot with a pulse would have initiated sanctions. Bottom line, Putin did this under Biden’s watch because he doesnt respect him, he views Biden as being weak. He never would of done this under Trump.
“Russia’s economy is on course to contract in two consecutive years for the first time since the collapse that followed the Soviet breakup three decades ago,” Bloomberg reports. This is the first time their economy is contracting since the USSR broke up, what do you mean it was 'dead already'? As for sanctions, Trump refused to enact sanctions that Congress passed, let alone taking the initiative to sanction Russia the last time. Who gives a shit if Putin respects Biden? Putin got humiliated on the world stage by Biden. Putin made Trump his bitch and got everything he wanted under him.
Biden is weak and Putin knew it. As soon as he was officially elected, Putin went in for the kill. He is scared shit of Trump.
Putin is the schoolyard bully. Biden is that intelligent bespectacled schoolboy who looks like a walkover. Putin decides to give Biden a thrashing but Biden has all been prepared and has plenty of schoolmates to backup. Putin takes a swing but to his utmost surprise gets a thumping like he's never experienced before and goes home a broken mess. Putin when he gets home and tells his family he was set on by a schoolyard bully. His family (@bennyg) believe him.
Putin is buried in his alternate facts and twisted reality. Sounds like many Trumpers. Talking to Putin is 'just a waste of time,' said Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi https://www.businessinsider.com/talking-to-putin-waste-time-says-italian-pm-mario-draghi-2022-4 Italian PM Mario Draghi said he's starting to believe that talking to Putin is" a waste of time." Draghi said he began losing faith in talks with Moscow after mass killings were discovered in Bucha. He also warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin's goal has "not been the search for peace." Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, saying he's starting to believe it's "just a waste of time" to engage with his counterpart in Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine. "I am beginning to think that those people are right when they say: 'It is useless to talk to him, it's just a waste of time'," Draghi told Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera. Draghi spoke of a March 30 telephone call between him and Putin and said the Russian leader had discussed the possibility of Italy buying Russian gas with rubles. The country is said to import 40% of its gas from Russia. The prime minister said both sides agreed to speak again within the next few days. "Then came the horror of Bucha," Draghi said, referring to the Kyiv suburb where authorities uncovered mass killings of civilians after Russian forces left the area. The prime minister said he believed French President Emmanuel Macron, who has tried to position himself at the forefront of the EU's negotiations with Putin, is "right to try every possible avenue of dialogue." "But I have the impression that the horror of war with its carnage, with what they did to children and women, is completely independent of the words and phone calls that are made," Draghi continued. "So far, Putin's goal has not been the search for peace, but the attempt to annihilate the Ukrainian resistance, occupy the country and entrust it to a friendly government," added the prime minister. When asked if he shared President Joe Biden's labeling of the Bucha killings as "war crimes," Draghi said: "What do we want to call Bucha's horror if not war crimes?" Still, the Italian prime minister said terms like "genocide" and "war crimes" have "a precise legal meaning." "There will be a way and time to check which words best fit the inhuman acts of the Russian army," Draghi said. Draghi, the former chief of the EU Central Bank, was appointed prime minister in February 2021 after his predecessor, Giuseppe Conte, stepped down amid the COVID-19 pandemic and severe economic downturn. In recent weeks, Draghi had sought to diversify Italy's gas imports via deals across Africa, and encouraged European nations to band together and cap prices on Russian gas. "The market power that the European Union has vis-à-vis Moscow is a weapon to be used," he told Il Corriere della Sera. "A cap on the price of gas reduces the financing we give to Russia every day."