VLADIMIR PUTIN“The Most Dangerous Man in the World”: The Life and Times of Vladimir Putin
How did he manage to rise from a communal apartment in suburban Leningrad and a mediocre early career in the KGB to become Russia’s all-powerful president? What has driven this former spy, who was once described as so forgettable that he ‘disappeared into the wallpaper’, to launch a war on Ukraine?
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been called the most dangerous man in the world.
How did he manage to rise from a communal apartment in suburban Leningrad and a mediocre early career in the KGB to become Russia’s all-powerful president, who after more than two decades in power might remain in office until 2036? And what has driven this former spy, who was once described as so forgettable that he ‘disappeared into the wallpaper’, to launch a war on Ukraine that has sparked a global energy and food crisis and taken Russia and its adversaries to the brink of a nuclear war?
Philip Short has written acclaimed biographies of the Chinese tyrant Mao Zedong, the Khmer Rouge despot Pol Pot, and the charismatic French president Francois Mitterrand. In Putin: His Life and Times, Short has surpassed himself with a biography that is both meticulously researched and wonderfully readable. Eight years in the making, and based on wide-ranging documentary sources and nearly 200 interviews, Short’s book stands head and shoulders above other recent Putin biographies.
Short anchors Putin’s life firmly in the sweep of Russian history. Starting from the ‘Great Patriotic War’, in which Putin’s father was wounded, the book takes the reader through the decline and collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation’s early years under President Boris Yeltsin, and Putin’s rise to power at the turn of the millennium. It concludes with his attack on Ukraine early this year.
Short is at pains to paint a balanced picture of a leader who is both strategically skilled and dangerously flawed. Despite suggestions that Putin is under severe stress, Short reminds us that he keeps his emotions in check, weighs decisions carefully and is highly disciplined, starting the day with a rigorous workout, laps in his Olympic-sized pool and a plate of kasha (buckwheat porridge).
Leaders who have met Putin describe him as well briefed, direct and action-oriented, but also as introverted, manipulative and frequently ill at ease. At school, he was rebellious and trouble-prone. While on a KGB training program, he broke his arm in a fight and was labelled as having ‘a lowered sense of danger’. His middling performance gained him a backwater assignment in Dresden, East Germany’s second largest city, rather than a plum posting in a Western capital.
