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5 May 2022

The Core of Putin’s Weakness

JOHN SIPHER

OPINION — In 2017, I wrote a short piece for Foreign Policy asking if Putin was more a product of his KGB background and personal circumstances, or whether he could be better described as acting in the longer cultural and historical tradition of Russian Tsars and Soviet Party bosses. I came down on the former explanation.

However, since that time, Putin has justified his actions – to include the invasion of Ukraine – in increasingly nationalist and historic terms. He has inveighed Russian myths and historical grievances, quoted chauvinist Russian philosophers and even claimed that Ukraine doesn’t exist, except as part of a greater historical Russia.

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