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Gerrard White's avatar

27 March 2024 Understanding Putin

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/key-understanding-vladimir-putin-82391#disqus_thread

September 21, 2019

With thanks to Will Schryver for posting this - https://nitter.poast.org/imetatronink

« The Key to Understanding Vladimir Putin » by John Evans

A very clear minded first hand account of the then young assistant to the Mayor of St Petersbug, from a career US diplomat, from 1995 onwards

Untainted by the present day general vilifications nor by the scale of his achievements – this represents a very even minded portrait of an efficient legal minded reputedly incorruptible.. well you have here that rara avis – a straightforward even affectionate sketch which takes care to state just what is or can be known from an un baised witness – who does express mildmannered incredulity that no one else in the US bureaucracy was then prepared to take him seriously, apart from President Bush

This admiration shines through the bureaucratese in President Bush’s White House Press Confernce statements and in the q/a joint session during his first meeting with President Putin at Brdo Castle in June 2001 – in which the range of discussions and the evident enthusiasm display great optimism

To read this now is to regret all that since has come to pass

https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010618.html

John Evans- « Putin is what Russians call a “gosudarstvennik,” a man of the state. He is not motivated primarily by money, although St. Petersburg friends of ours acknowledge that he has not failed to take advantage of opportunities that have come his way. When I and other Americans in St. Petersburg knew Putin, he had the reputation as the only bureaucrat in the city who did not take bribes (this is an exaggeration; there were others). He was well regarded on the whole, and devoted to his mentor and then-boss, Sobchak, one of the great democrats of the new Russia. A former law professor, Sobchak was a fine writer and orator, but not the most effective manager. Putin largely ran the day-to-day operations of the city, and was credited with bringing some order into the chaotic crime-ridden business world. As Russians said in those days, “if you have crime, isn’t it better that it be organized?” I cannot recall Putin personally saying that, but he might have.

Unlike Yeltsin, Putin was never a heavy drinker. Nor was he a teetotaler. He would deliver a toast when required, which was often, and do it well. Toasts in Russia are a way of communicating, of showing respect, and of honoring people, especially on birthdays and career anniversaries or other milestones. Toasts are offered also (without clinking glasses) to the dead, and there were unfortunately many such occasions in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, not to mention the tragic memories of World War II, in which the city was besieged for 900 days, claiming members of Putin’s own family. The entire city and Consular Corps turns out without fail for the memorial to those who died in the Siege of Leningrad and lie in mass graves at the Pushkaryevskoe Cemetery.

Those of us who knew Putin in the 1990s recall that his formula for the recovery of Russia consisted of three elements: rebuilding the economy, dealing with the crime problem, and reforming the courts. That was a pretty good prescription for what ailed Russia at the time and is still a good basic recipe. Note that he was concerned exclusively with domestic problems: nothing about geopolitics here.

I am not going to attempt to prove it, but I assure you that Putin 1) was not anti-American (although he felt more comfortable with Germans); 2) was not a communist (at least by that time) or hostile to private business; 3) was not anti-Semitic; 4) and was not intolerant of gay people. I have already noted that he had a legal bent. You may take my word for these assertions or not. I have concrete examples to back each of them. »

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Johann Goergen's avatar

Means, motive, opportunity implicate fascist Ukraine. Russia will ignore Western blather and create facts on the ground. As usual.

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