Does Putin think he’s James Bond?

[Robert Urbanek]

Modern autocrats and despots are often film buffs. Russian leader Vladimir Putin, a former officer of the KGB, the Soviet Union spy agency, may fancy himself a Russian James Bond, an action hero astride the world stage.

Putin bears some resemblance to Daniel Craig, the current incarnation of Bond. Publicity photos preceding the release of Casino Royale (2006) showed a shirtless Craig emerging from the ocean. Shortly thereafter, photos emerged of a shirtless Putin fishing in a river.

In the last few years, Putin has used many photo ops to show himself as a man of action: shooting a tiger with a tranquilizer dart, scuba diving at an archaeological site, climbing a wall at a summer youth camp, arm wrestling, riding a snowmobile, piloting a motorboat, descending to the bottom of a lake in a mini-sub, and flying a motorized hang glider.

All of this might seem harmless preening except that Putin likely feels he is free to copy another Bond trait: a license to kill. Furthermore, the synchronicity between Putin and Bond may convince the Russian leader that he is blessed by providence and will be successful in all his international “adventures.”

And, of course, Bond took on Pussy Galore; Putin took on Pussy Riot.

 

[Stratford57]

Cohen vehemently rejects characterizations of Putin as a one-dimensional creation of the old Soviet KGB in which he served well over a decade as a young man.6 Indeed, Cohen suggests that years of service in East Germany probably gave Putin an appreciation of European culture and perhaps even helped him to think about the West more realistically than many other Russian political figures. Putin’s subsequent career has exhibited a measure of pragmatism as well as the strategic resolve to advance Russia’s position in global affairs. The key inference here might be that Putin, though problematic, is not a worst-case scenario for the West.

Posturing as a defender of Christian civilization, Putin throws multicultural theory back in the faces of condescending Westerners. In turn, Western critics have engaged in rhetorical escalation based on guilt by association with some suggesting, for example, that Putin is a white supremacist.
War with Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate

Are U.S. policymakers aware of Putin’s extraordinary assistance to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan after 9/11, his crucial help in supplying NATO troops now there or his support for harsher sanctions against Iran? Do they know that for these and other “pro-American” concessions he is viewed by many Russian national security officials as an “appeaser?”
Stop the pointless demonization of Putin


P.S. All the Russian Orthodox Christians all over the world condemned provocative Pussy Riot's misbehavior in a church and demanded them to be judged so nothing like that will ever happen again in our churches. If you, Western people, approve their dirty action in the church, please invite them to your churches but we sure don't want THAT in ours.

 

[Blackrook]

I remember the bad days of the Soviet Union, and Putin's regime is really not so bad compared to the horrors of Communism.

 

[Robert Urbanek]

As we speculate about the mental state of the increasingly erratic Putin, I thought I would resurrect this old thread that offers a theory regarding Putin's self-image.