Transatlantic Relations Program Nonresident Senior Fellow Adrian Karatnycky writes for Newsweek on how to understand Putin’s actions and comments to the media:
Over the past several years, President Vladimir Putin has consolidated power in Russia by marshaling an assertive nationalist ideology, creating an alternative reality through total media dominance and prosecuting a hybrid war in Ukraine.
Yet for a leader who speaks boldly, his preferred mode of action is clandestine—a style shaped by his years in the USSR’s state security service, the KGB.