Quotes About Putin

Getting rid of the Magnitsky Act is one of the top, if not the top, priorities of the Putin regime.

Putin set out to build a mafia state. He didn't set out to build a totalitarian regime. But he was building his mafia state on the ruins of a totalitarian regime. And so we end up with a mafia state and a totalitarian society.

Putin and many of his gang may have once been Communists, but they are not that today. Rather, they have embraced a new totalitarian political ideology known as 'Eurasianism.'

Putin is a totally inscrutable guy. He gives nothing away. People interpreted what they wanted to see in him.

Lying is the message. Its not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power of the truth itself. The Putin Paradigm, New York Review of Books

In the fall of 2000, a group of Russian Olympic athletes met with Putin and complained that the lack of a singable anthem demoralized them in competitions and made their victories feel hollow. The old Soviet anthem had been so much better this way, they said.

There is a reason that Russian troops in both Moscow and Beslan acted in ways that maximized bloodshed; they actually aimed to maximize the fear and the horror. This is the classic modus operandi of terrorists, and in this sense it can certainly be said that Putin and the terrorists were acting in concert.

Finally, there is every indication that Putin's government worked neither to prevent terrorist attacks nor to resolve crises peacefully when they occurred; moreover, the president consistently and increasingly staked his reputation not only on his own determination to "rub them out" whatever the circumstances but also on the terrorists' perceived ruthlessness.

One thing is certain: Once the hostage-takings occurred, the government task forces acting under Putin's direct supervision did everything to ensure that the crises ended as horrifyingly as possible—to justify continued warfare in Chechnya and further crackdowns on the media and the opposition in Russia and, finally, to quell any possible criticism from the West, which, after 9/11, was obligated to recognize in Putin a fellow fighter against Islamic terrorism.

following the Kursk disaster].. Putin appeared on CNN's Larry King Live. When King asked What happened?, Putin shrugged, smiled - impishly, it seemed - and said It sank.

They are just doing their jobs," said Putin, meaning that protesters were working for money—state television channels had by this time aired a series of reports claiming that the protests were bankrolled by the U.S. State Department.

Putin and his colleagues were reduced mainly to collecting press clippings, thus contributing to the growing mountains of useless information produced by the KGB.

in 2003, when Khodorkovsky attempted to talk to Putin about corruption, the global organization Transparency International ranked Russia as more corrupt than 64 percent of the world's countries:

Illarionov resigned his position as sherpa—Putin's personal representative—to the Group of Eight; winning Russia's full membership in the G8 had been one of Illarionov's main accomplishments.

Like Browder, Illarionov became a tireless and vocal roaming critic of the Putin regime.

And with the assets of the country's largest private company hijacked in broad daylight, Putin had claimed his place as the godfather of a mafia clan ruling the country.

someone believed to have access to the Kremlin—estimated Putin's personal net worth at $40 billion.

Putin planned to dress him down, Putin said, "I understand that an illness is an illness, but I would recommend that Igor Vladimirovich [Zyuzin] get better as soon as possible. Or I'll just have to send a doctor to see him and take care of the problem altogether." In

The skeptical note in Roldugin's "He really thought he knew something …" is as clear and unmistakable in the original Russian as it is in the English translation, but it seems that both Roldugin and Putin, who certainly vetted the quote, missed it.)

Putin realized that he now bore responsibility for the entire crumbling edifice of a former superpower. He was no longer entitled to seethe at the people who had destroyed Soviet military might and imperial pride: by dint of becoming president, to a great number of his compatriots he had now become one of those people.

The plan, ostensibly, was for Medvedev to sit out his four years doing nothing but talking pretty, and then to cede the throne to Putin, this time for two consecutive six-year terms.

The system's greatest vulnerability stemmed from Putin's and his inner circle's pleonexia, the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belonged to others, that was exerting ever greater pressure on the regime from inside.

And with this, the transformation of Russia back into the USSR was, for all Putin's intents and purposes, complete.

Yeltsin also knew, or thought he knew, that Putin would not allow the prosecution or persecution of Yeltsin himself once he retired. And if Yeltsin still possessed even a fraction of his once outstanding feel for politics, he knew that Russians would like this man they would be inheriting, and who would be inheriting them.