In the weeks since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, one man has loomed large: Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
Every inch the potentate, he began by soliciting support from key ministers live on TV; he followed this up with an outraged verbal assault on Ukraine, lambasting Lenin, Stalin and Gorbachev for good measure. Three days later, in the early morning in Moscow, he was back on national television announcing the start of military action. The first tanks moved in and the first bombs were dropped within hours.
Russia’s military onslaught has tended to be seen as an old-fashioned war launched by an old-fashioned autocrat, surprising and shocking to everyone who believed such wars to be over, at least in Europe. The scenes of preparations for street-fighting that have emerged from Ukrainian cities in recent days have been tragically reminiscent of black-and-white newsreel from the very same cities Germany invaded in 1941. But the supposedly old-fashioned autocrat also reflects the complexities of the times he has lived through.
