Deconstructing Vladimir Putin
He’s not the badass the propaganda makes him out to be, he’s just addicted to their love
There is an amazing interview with Vladimir Putin at the Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is a random day in 1996. Putin is officially moving from St. Petersburg to Moscow.
At the time of his departure, he was technically still unemployed. Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, in whose administration he had been in charge of registering foreign companies setting up businesses in St. Petersburg, had just lost his re-election bid.
The loyal soldier Putin, however, was highly recommended by his mentor and former boss and so the Yeltsin team in Moscow brought him on board for a very sensitive task.
The mission would require not just an amazing amount of tact but the person overseeing the process also had to have the kind of skills taught to KGB agents: cunning, an ability to read people and know when they were lying, and remorseless.
Putin’s new role was to account for all of the wealth of the Soviet Union that was officially on the books just before the collapse. If there was a salt and pepper shaker that was technically owned by the government, the person owning it post-collapse had better have a good reason as to why it was at their dacha and not in…
