Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center Resident Senior Fellow Anders Aslund writes for The American Interest on the similarities between the strategies and rhetoric of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Czar Nicholas I:
Putin cherishes some history lessons. In early 1904, before the disastrous Russo-Japanese War, the czarist minister of interior Vyacheslav von Plehve famously said: “We need a small victorious war.” That war, of course, was neither small nor victorious, but Putin has built his successful career on a skillful application of Plehve’s insight: Use foreign policy boldness to sustain political power at the center.
Thus, in 1999, Putin rose to popularity by promising to kill Chechens in response to a number of house bombings that were not actually carried out by Chechens. His second successful war was a figurative one against oligarchs in 2003-4, when he confiscated Russia’s biggest private company, Yukos, without legal ground. In 2008, Putin launched his short, ideal war for five days against Georgia.