Russian President Vladimir Putin went from being a rather ordinary seeming KGB officer to attaining enormous power, says British journalist and author Philip Short.
Short thinks for quite some time, Putin’s been “the most interesting kid on the block” and explores this in his biography Putin – His Life and Times.
Putin: His Life and Times book cover Photo: supplied
Trying to penetrate the barrier Putin puts up, as a person and a political leader, was a huge challenge when writing the book, Short says.
“When he was born, Stalin was still in power, so his life basically spans the last 70 years of the Soviet Union and then of Russia.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, people could rise extremely quickly through the ranks – and Short says that’s how Putin came to power.
Putin had a very ordinary KGB career, but he had a belief in his own possibilities, even if those around him didn’t recognise it, Short says.
“I think with Putin, yes, he was kind of lucky in that he was in circumstances which permitted him to rise. I’m very careful about the word ambition because unlike most politicians he didn’t kind of struggle and strive to climb up the greasy pole and have a whole life spent preparing for political power...but he learned to make himself indispensable.”
He was a person who got things done and when Boris Yeltsin was president, Putin was the obvious choice when something needed doing.
“He managed to be where he would be promoted, he would rise and, in the end, would be the only possible choice.”
You may have seen the photos of Putin receiving western leaders at a six metre long table – Short says “that was theatrics".
Putin has always projected different messages to different people, Short says.
“He really is a chameleon, a shapeshifter. He takes on different personas depending on what he wants to project and who he’s talking to.”
War on Ukraine
Short believes Putin wanted to "bring Ukraine to heel” as his last accomplishment before moving out of power. But he “miscalculated things horribly” and Ukraine has resisted strongly.
“I’m not saying he was going to move out of power completely, he may well move sideways to something else, but he has known for some time that the time has come when he really needs to initiate a political transition.”
It’s hard to tell when and if he’s going to be able to make a political move away from the presidency, he says.
“It just hasn’t worked out the way he hoped.”
Putin has a tendency to take risks, Short says, and he always has.
“He’s aware that is part of his character, and he normally suppresses it. He's normally very cautious, he doesn’t let himself get carried away and take risks even if he’d like to.”
He took risks with Chechnya and he’s taking risks with Ukraine, he says.
“I think we need to be rather careful with Ukraine, I’m not convinced that the risk he’s taken is going to prove his undoing. I put that very cautiously. He may get perhaps even the most important parts of what he wants from the war in Ukraine, it’s not over yet, it’s going to be very nasty and it’s going to go on.”
At some point the war, “as horrible though it is, is going to recede into the background,” Short says, and people will focus much more on what’s happening between the United States and China.
“It is that process which is going to make what is happening with Russia seem less important and, in a way, force the two sides to find some sort of modus vivendi. But it’s a very slow process.”
He argues it is part of a huge geopolitical transition that we’ve entered into.
“That the world order which has existed essentially since the Second World War is coming to an end and something new is going to replace it.”
So, what does Putin want?
“What he wants, and this is the fundamental basis of what’s happening in Ukraine, is to force the United States in particular, and the West in general, to respect Russia’s priorities,” Short says.
“To respect that Russia has interests, that Russia has red lines if you like, and that moving the western alliance up to the Russian border is not acceptable and the place where we’ve chosen this arm wrestling is unfortunate Ukraine – tens of thousands of its citizens are dying in the process.”
Philip Short is a British journalist and author. He studied at Queens' College, Cambridge, became a freelance correspondent for a number of years in Africa and then a foreign correspondent for the BBC for a quarter of a century. He's also written biographies of Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and François Mitterrand.
