Quotes About Putin

Vladimir Putin rose to lead Russia to victory over the Wharton School of Economics' plan to bleed Russia dry. As we shall see elsewhere, the Sachs model called for selling Russia's vast State owned industries to private companies at distress prices.

We are no longer a leader. Putin has become the leader, and it's an embarassment to our country.

WITH COMMUNISM NO LONGER VIABLE, THE DEFAULT RALLYING CRY for an autocratic Russian leader is nationalism. Putin, with his staged military parades and frequent invocation of past heroics, sounds that trumpet repeatedly. He wants citizens to believe that only he can restore his country to its rightful position in world affairs. If that means playing a little rough, so be it

Earlier, I cited Oswald Spengler's chilling century-old prophecy that "the era of individualism, liberalism and democracy, of humanitarianism and freedom, is nearing its end. The masses will accept with resignation the victory of the Caesars, the strong men, and will obey them." This is the real danger posed by Putin: that he will be a model for other national leaders who want to retain their grip on power indefinitely, despite political and legal constraints.

The Russian economy is tanking. It's gotten so bad that today Vladimir Putin had to pawn his stolen Super Bowl ring. And Putin will finance his next invasion on Kickstarter.

It's very clear that Vladimir Putin has decided that he will eliminate his opponents and anyone who stands up for democracy and freedom. And he does so with relative impunity.

Even in Ukraine, a country much closer to Moscow's heart, had he wanted to annex the ethnically Russian Donbas region, he could have done that in 2014. Indeed, when Putin made it clear that this was not going to happen, he disappointed and angered many Russian nationalists who had seen him as their champion.

Russians can be unhappy, yet still loyal. Putin is to a large extent being rated not as a man, not even as a politician, but as an icon of Russia. To vote for him is not to endorse a program, but to express patriotism

Putin is smart enough not to believe his own propaganda. Trump isn't.

But, the source explained, this fit Putin's larger strategic vision: "to destroy NATO, destroy the European Union, and seriously harm the United States.

Putin, it seemed, didn't see how intervention in Libya could produce a good outcome for Russia; instead, he viewed Russia's abstention as Medvedev caving in to American influence. In the name of advancing the Reset, Medvedev had just violated a central principle of Russian (and Soviet) foreign policy: resisting American military interventions

By the end of his second term in 2008, Putin had redefined Russia's role in the world, largely, but not completely, in opposition to the United States and the West.

The result of all these unrealized schemes, however, was that Obama and Putin did not speak again for the next three years, until Putin became president again. No matter what the Russian constitution said, that lack of contact was not good for U.S.-Russian relations.

Quoted in the New York Times two days later, I called Bush's remarks a "rookie mistake." I went on: "I can understand the strategy on rapport, but it went too far . . . I think there is plenty of good reason not to trust President Putin. This is a man who was trained to lie."16 I was never invited back to brief President Bush again. Years later, during Obama's

Putin clearly had signaled that engagement with us was not in his portfolio. Yet we understood from that session that he remained the primary decision maker in Russia.

What has he gotten himself into with the Russians?" pressed Ailes. "Mostly," said Bannon, "he went to Russia and he thought he was going to meet Putin. But Putin couldn't give a shit about him. So he's kept trying." "He's Donald," said Ailes. "It's a magnificent thing," said Bannon, who had taken to regarding Trump as something like a natural wonder, beyond explanation.

Trump's repeated brags about his relationship with Vladimir Putin and the nature of Trump's relationship with the Kremlin.