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Tag Archives: Putin

#10 Putin’s Mother

April 17, 2014

How does he do it? On both sides of the Atlantic, Western leaders can only marvel at Vladimir Putin’s positioning. All week he has outsmarted them over Ukraine. Throughout three hours of Q&A, broadcast live from the Kremlin earlier today, he more than held his own with a domestic audience.

Where Putin is concerned, foreign policy success is not just a pretty face saver for failure at home. The Russian president is simply firing on all fronts.

Is it all down to appearances? Judging by today’s performance, indeed there are iconic elements in the way Putin presents himself; such as the starched white shirt (the more effective because we have previously seen the bare torso underneath), and chillingly blue-grey eyes. Yet his Yul Brynner bone structure is countered by, of all things, a comb-over, linking Putin to various downtrodden husbands from a spate of late twentieth century sitcoms. The studio set didn’t help much, either. The ice-blue background was meant to be cool; instead, of all things, it looked like leftovers from a UK Aids-awareness campaign of the 1980s. But none of this matters much because with Putin, appearance is not what’s paramount. This is not a man of whom you would dream of saying, he is a brand. Ofcourse by now his reputation precedes him, but only because, long before any concern for brand building or reputational enhancement, he first of all addresses the question – any question – in and of itself. This approach allows Putin to appropriate the situations in which he finds himself; in other words, he grasps the nettle instead of being stung by it. While British politicians and even Barack Obama are afflicted by an unbearable lightness of being, Putin’s actualité has allowed him to develop a successful realpolitik. He personally may pine for films about KGB men in the Soviet era, or dream of returning to the womb of Mother Russia, but it’s Mother Thatcher he resembles in his address to the world as it really is.

Vladimir To His Mother

September 7, 2013

” ‘Liar.’ Regretted it as soon as I said it. Losing control like that, sounding off about the American Secretary of State over Syria – amateurish, childish. All those years of self-discipline, my lips becoming more bloodless with every step up the career ladder; and I’m still a big mouth boy to be kept out of the Pioneers?

“Mother, it cannot be.

” ‘President Obama didn’t get elected….to be nice to Russia’ – that’s me speaking; that’s how I talk. Sardonic, drier than the martini I don’t allow myself to drink. But wherever possible I am courteous, courtly, hospitable. Thus, draping a coat over Frau Merkel’s shoulders as if she were the most beautiful woman in the world as well as the most powerful.

“Is my hair too square? Do my thousand-dollar suits declare their luxury instead of partially disguising it. But who cares what those Little Islanders think?

“At the Peterhof on Friday evening, with all the world’s leaders in attendance, I was the chivalry of Imperial Russia and the intelligence of the KGB.

“Only I can represent my country in this way. Mother Russia needs her son Putin.”

…

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