Quotes About Putin

Too many countries of the former Soviet bloc remain under the control of authoritarian leaders, including some, like the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who have learned how to maintain a more convincing facade of elections than their communist predecessors.

It's essential for the U.S. and Europe to prevent Putin from going farther and reversing the hard-won independence of former Soviet republics.

When it comes to sowing doubt about democracy and fueling dissension among Americans, Mr. Putin is eating our lunch.

Journalists are currently in the most insecure profession you can find: the majority live hand to mouth, and ostracism by their friends would be terminal. Thus they become easily prone to manipulation by lobbyists, as we saw with GMOs, the Syrian wars, etc. You say something unpopular in that profession about Brexit, GMOs, or Putin, and you become history. This is the opposite of business where me-tooism is penalized.

Putin has a long way to go before he matches the war crimes that we carried out in countries like Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan.

Sunday was the normal day for the political awareness session at sea. Ordinarily Putin would have officiated, reading some Pravada editorials, followed by selected quotations from the works of Lenin and a discussion of the lessons to be learned from the readings. It is very much like a church service.

Trump has emphatically denied ties to Russia - a claim refuted by his Twitter feed and a cursory Google search. Putin says his government had nothing to do with the hack of the DNC computers, even though it carelessly left a trail of crumbs tracing back to his intelligence services. The cunning liar is exploiting the blundering one.

Vladimir Putin is leading a dying country. Vladimir Putin's regime exports three things: petroleum products - coal, natural gas, and hydrocarbon energy in the form of petroleum. Number two, it exports arms, and, number three, it exports people.

Of course for some Putin is a tyrant and dictator. Others consider him Russia's savior. But I'm in a difficult position. Putin helped my father - and practically saved his life.

Putin sought to destabilize Ukraine's economy.

Our basic problem is how do we stop the hot war on the ground in Ukraine, and not get into a more and more escalatory relationship with Putin.

Hillary Clinton's Russian re-set policy gave Moscow permission to go from privately challenging U.S. foreign policy to publicly moving military hardware into Syria to prop up Bashar al-Assad and annexing Crimea from Ukraine. And Donald Trump seems to support the idea that Putin will be Putin. It's enough to leave America's allies confused.

The more Mr. Putin extends the fighting in eastern Ukraine, the more the financial markets will ratchet up their own pressure on Russia.

Putin could no more survive returning Crimea to Ukraine than Bibi Netanyahu could survive giving East Jerusalem back to Jordan.

To the degree that we can demonstrate support for the Ukrainian government, we can change Putin's calculus and increase the risk to him and to Russia for moving combat forces closer to Kiev.

Trump has long been a fan of Vladimir Putin but seems to be unaware that Russia's goal in Syria is simply the maintenance of its longtime ally President Bashar al-Assad in power. Indeed, Moscow has hitherto shown little appetite to focus on ISIS.

Putin offered to allow American investigators to interview the 12 Russian intelligence agents just indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in exchange for allowing Russians to have access to me and those close to me.

Sobchak found Putin useful both because of his connections in the security services and for his understanding of foreign economies—a mix of old skills and new.

Putin's influence in St. Petersburg, however, did not stem solely from his regulatory authority.

Putin's ability to maneuver between the city government, the security services, and the mafias that controlled many of the country's leading export industries.

At the same time, Putin's background in the security services facilitated his use of the law-enforcement apparatus. In his autobiography, Putin emphasized the unity of St. Petersburg's law-enforcement agencies during the early 1990s, a unity that he had helped to forge.

Putin demanded that St. Petersburg companies register with the Committee for External Relations to turn over data on their finances. Working with the tax inspectorate, Putin's analysts examined firms' tax payment records.

Putin discovered that his sources of financing had dried up, even as St. Petersburg's mafia bosses collected pots of money for Sobchak's opponents.29 When the votes were counted, Sobchak lost the mayoralty, and Putin lost his job. The consequences were worse for Sobchak, who faced not only the end of his political career but

The coalition that backed Putinomics understood the link between financial stability and political stability.