Many believe that history is largely determined by the personal relationships between world leaders. Vladimir Putin’s 25 years of interaction with foreign leaders provide a fascinating case study of this theory.
The Russian president recently invited Narendra Modi to a private dinner at his home, and the Indian prime minister said he was very touched by the gesture. China’s Xi Jinping called Putin his best friend. At the 2024 BRICS summit, Putin said such friendships were the basis of a “new world order.”
In the past, the most warlike leaders received different treatment.
There is evidence that Putin played mind games with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example. At a meeting in Sochi in 2007 where they discussed Europe’s energy supply, the Russian president brought his large Labrador. Putin knew that Merkel was terrified of dogs – the result of a dog attack years earlier – and this unsettled her during their interview.
In Putin’s tripa new two-hour CBC documentary marking his quarter-century in power, former Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay said he was shocked by Putin’s behavior with Merkel.
“It speaks to a dark nature, a character flaw in this man who crosses all limits in terms of diplomacy and human nature,” MacKay said.
Soviet-born Australian journalist Zoya Sheftalovich, who writes for Politico Europe, told CBC that Putin “is well informed, he knows what people’s buttons are and he pushes them.”
Konstantin Eggert, a Lithuania-based journalist who works for German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, said: “Clearly he wants to dominate all the time. He wants to prove that he’s the toughest guy in the room. He must always have someone to humiliate. “.
Putin’s treatment of foreign leaders appears to be based on the certainty that he will outlast them. He plays a long game to achieve the desired results. And he probably welcomes Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency, especially since Trump has said so many negative things about Ukraine and NATO.
Luke Harding, former Moscow bureau chief of the Guardian and author of Invasion: The Inside Story of Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Struggle for Survivalsays Putin, “thinks Western leaders are gullible and ephemeral.”
“They’re sort of colorful butterflies that flutter around for a while and then disappear when winter comes. Whereas Putin, who we know is about to outlive Stalin, doesn’t have to worry about pesky things like the elections, and he knows what he will do in two years, four years.”
“We seriously misjudged Putin”
Shortly after Putin became president in 2000, George W. Bush was elected president of the United States. He came to meet Putin at a summit in Slovenia, where he shared his immediate judgment of his Russian counterpart, saying: “I looked the man in the eyes…I was able to get a sense of his soul .”
“I think George W. Bush regrets saying that now, because it’s not clear where Putin’s soul is,” said John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and national security adviser who met with Putin on numerous occasions, at CBC.
“But [the comment] “It was indicative of our optimism that we believed the Cold War was over, that we could find a way to bridge our differences and work together against what we saw as common threats,” Bolton said. “I think in hindsight we can see that we seriously misjudged Putin.”
Former Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay talks about a fateful meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The Americans are not the only ones to have fallen under Putin’s spell. During a visit to the United Kingdom in 2003, he enjoyed the royal treatment, touring London alongside the Queen in a horse-drawn carriage. It came as a shock to Russian dissident journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza.
“Literally the same week that Vladimir Putin’s government shut down the last independent TV channel [in Russia]”He was treated to a lavish state visit to London and a ride with the Queen of England,” Kara-Murza told CBC.
He points out that Putin also had political opponents arrested and imprisoned. “It was clear from the beginning, and yet… Western democratic countries have deliberately chosen to turn a blind eye to all these domestic authoritarian abuses.”
CBC requested an interview with Putin, but his press secretary declined the invitation.
Greater interest in Ukraine
Starting in 2012, Putin became more forceful toward Western countries, which became evident during his first private meeting with then-French President François Hollande. Putin was concerned about NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe and the missiles installed there.
As Hollande told CBC: “He asked for a piece of paper, which is quite rare for a meeting between heads of state. And on it he drew a map of Europe and placed on it the missiles which were positioned in the central part of Europe and which directly threatened its security. Already I wanted to play the victim – ‘I’m being attacked’ – to better justify what he might have to do to supposedly defend himself. »
Hollande was struck by Putin’s psychological tactics during their personal interviews. “It’s no coincidence that he trained in the KGB. The KGB was all about saying ‘I threaten you, but I also kiss you in an almost personal relationship.’ I always play a double game: ‘I’m threatening you, but I’m ready to talk.'”
In 2013, Putin shifted his attention to Ukraine, urging pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych to cancel a proposed new treaty with Europe. Ukraine’s largely pro-Western population rebelled, and kyiv’s Maidan Square filled with anti-Russian demonstrators, egged on by European and American politicians.
Yanukovych attempted to suppress the Maidan protest with police violence, but the demonstrators held their ground. After numerous casualties, Yanukovych fled the country aboard a helicopter in the middle of the night.
Politico journalist Sheftalovich says this was a big blow for Putin.
“He saw Ukraine as part of Russia, and he essentially saw Euro Maidan as the first part of a potential uprising that could eventually result in his ouster from power. So it was unacceptable to him that Euro Maidan had swept over him and that these protests had taken his man off his job.
Amid the joyful celebrations in kyiv, Putin was plotting his revenge. He had decided to divide Ukraine by seizing the Crimean peninsula in the south and the predominantly Russian-speaking regions in the east of the country. In 2014, it deployed Russian soldiers without any markings on their uniforms to Crimea. They became known as the “Little Green Men.”
Asked about them, Putin replied that they had nothing to do with Russia. Meanwhile, Russian soldiers and Russian-backed separatists began attacking the Ukrainian army in the eastern Russian-speaking regions of Donbass.
Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion who abandoned the sport to oppose Putin’s regime, sees Crimea as a turning point.
“It was the best way to tell the West that, you know, they’re not playing by the rules anymore… Annexation of territory is just a very important part of destroying the world order. Dictators are opportunists .Even Hitler was an opportunist, or Stalin That’s what made them really strong, so feel it, grab it, attack.
A fateful G20
Once again, the Western response to Putin’s actions seemed weak. He was still invited to the commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy in France in June 2014. Hollande welcomed him as a guest of honor.
The new pro-Western Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, was also present. Putin agreed to have a brief meeting with Poroshenko, who knew what he was dealing with.
“I have several recommendations for those considering meeting with Putin,” he told CBC. “Point #1, don’t trust Putin. He is a KGB officer who has specially learned to lie. Second, don’t be afraid of Putin, because if you are afraid of Putin, it feeds him. Putin will only go as far as we allow it to go together.
At a G20 meeting a few months later in Australia, then-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper attempted a tough approach.
According to MacKay, “Vladimir Putin came to this private session with other world leaders and immediately went to see our Prime Minister… who had talked a lot about Putin and his obvious plans for Crimea. Putin walked straight towards him, held out his hand… Prime Minister Harper then looked at him and said: “You have to leave Crimea. » And Putin replied: “We are not in Crimea”.
“It was the beginning of the end for Russia’s participation in the G8, because everyone in the room knew he was lying.”
Amid mounting casualties and stalemate in the war with Ukraine, Putin appears to have returned to his waiting game as he sees time ticking toward the end of President Joe Biden’s term , who led NATO’s campaign in defense of Ukraine.
While many Western leaders were shocked by Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Hollande said: “There is a big misunderstanding between Europeans and Putin, and more broadly, between the West and Poutine.
“Europeans do not want to go to war. For them, war has a terrible history, that of the 20th century, and there is no reason to think that war is possible on the continent today.
“But for Putin, war is possible. That’s the problem. We are peaceful and democratic nations who do not like death. Whereas for Putin, death is part of the action.”
WATCH | The full documentary Putin’s Journey:
