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We Need to Talk About Putin: Why the West Gets Him Wrong, and How to Get Him Right QUOTES

We Need to Talk About Putin: Why the West Gets Him Wrong, and How to Get Him Right QUOTES

1 " Those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart, and those who do regret it have no brain. "

― , We Need to Talk About Putin: Why the West Gets Him Wrong, and How to Get Him Right

2 " Russians can be unhappy, yet still loyal. Putin is to a large extent being rated not as a man, not even as a politician, but as an icon of Russia. To vote for him is not to endorse a program, but to express patriotism "

― , We Need to Talk About Putin: Why the West Gets Him Wrong, and How to Get Him Right

3 " Putin has no ideological commitment to anything, really, and so has no reason to try to impose totalitarianism. Ideologists are, after all, the scariest kinds of rulers, because they want to dictate what goes on inside their people's heads. Putin is, of course, willing to use propaganda and media control to mobilize support and squeeze out alternative perspectives, but he doesn't really care what people think - as long as they do what they are told. Putin is not a philosopher - and that is something for which we, and Russians, should be thankful. "

― , We Need to Talk About Putin: Why the West Gets Him Wrong, and How to Get Him Right

4 " Even in Ukraine, a country much closer to Moscow’s heart, had he wanted to annex the ethnically Russian Donbas region, he could have done that in 2014. Indeed, when Putin made it clear that this was not going to happen, he disappointed and angered many Russian nationalists who had seen him as their champion. "

― , We Need to Talk About Putin: Why the West Gets Him Wrong, and How to Get Him Right