Winston Churchill's old line about Russia---a riddle wrapped around a mystery inside an enigma could easily apply to Putin himself.
Certainly, Vladimir Putin is an unlikely giant of modern geopolitics. Born to a family of modest means in 1952, he made a career of the KGB, which sent him to the front line in East Germany with the mission of recruiting people to spy on the West. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Putin worked in the city government of St. Petersburg, then joined the Kremlin staff of Boris Yeltsin, who marveled at Putin's "lightning reactions" and precision. Yeltsin named Putin the head of the Federal Security Service which replaced the KGB, and then his prime minister. That positioned Putin to become Yeltsin's successor as President in 2000."
end quote from the time magazine with Putin on the cover as Czar from page 33.
It is interesting to me that Putin went from Head of the new KGB (the FSB) to basically now Czar of Russia since the early 1990s under the first democratically elected president, Yeltsin.
begin 2nd quote page 33
"Putin saw NATOs expansion to the east as a threat---and an insulting broken promise. (Some contend that the U.S. agreed not to expand NATO if Russia supported Germany's 1990 unification.)
"NATO remains a military alliance, and we are against having a military alliance making itself at home right in our backyard or in our historic territory," he told Russia's parliament in March.
end quote on middle of page 33 from the latest Time magazine with Putin as Czar on the cover.
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