Vladimir Putin: Man of Iron, his holiday album

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46158000/jpg/_46158133_007748572-1.jpg
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46158000/jpg/_46158182_007748684-1.jpg
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46158000/jpg/_46158198_007748942-1.jpg

he totally looks centaur in the last one

http://www.thetech.org/genetics/images/ask/centaur.gif

The first one looks less like swimming, more like embarrassing dad playing Godzilla (beachful of cringeing progeny not pictured)

Does putin have any progeny?

he strikes me as the kind of guy who would clone miniauture versions of himself rather than conventionally procreate

So two daughters, but whilst looking for photos I found this saucy postcard

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/08_02/PutinWildAP_468x300.jpg

Well, the Times says the pictures cement Putin's status as a gay icon.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00597/POD_8__597591a.jpg
more horseplay

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00597/Vladimir-Putin_4__597876a.jpg
getting a bit of a dave gahan vibe off of this one

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00597/Vladimir-Putin_7__597870a.jpg
okay, this is undeniably pretty cool

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00597/Vladimir-Putin_9__597488a.jpg
this is my favourite

as does the mail it seems:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-477089/Gay-Russians-claim-bare-chested-Putin-own.html

xp ^^ what you don't know is that putin is eating that man's first born son

That Mail page links to the headline: "Vegetarians' outrage as Tesco admits 'macabre' practice of turning out-of-date meat into electricity". I can imagine Putin doing this to wild animals next.

Looks like a Bond villain.

"just make sure 007 never troubles me again."

Vladimir Putin, Action Man (every single photo there is a winner)

Vladimir Putin aims at a whale with a crossbow

Putin, alarmed by a bear that could walk on water,

awww you had my hopes up before i saw you deleted 'to take a piece of its skin for analysis' xp

it was the same deal with vladimir, he was all psyched about getting to slay the whale

disappointing lack of brutality

HELPER OF WHALES
FEEDER OF MOOSE
FRIEND OF BIKERS

what made me really lol was his racing helmet's imperial eagle

glad the one where he "discovered" the "ancient" "greek" "artifacts" is in there.

can't top 15

"21. Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signs autographs for kids outside Khabarovsk, on August 27, 2010 during a visit in the region. It is quite probable he is the father of the two girls. (Alexei Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images)"

33 a strong second though xp

disappointing lack of brutality

Most modern Bond villans outsource their polonium assassinations to trusted henchmen, but I would have liked to see an impromptu suckerpunch against a foe.

Fifteen minutes after Putin left the central Moscow polling site, three women tore off their shirts and began shouting "Putin is a thief!" They were dragged away by police.

hoping this gets epic

Not sure it will get epic. Putin's still very popular and there's no real opposition to get behind.

SV, do you think the western media talking up the ~spirit of protest~ in russia atm is being blown a bit out of proportion then?

also, separately, wtf @ this anti-gay law in st petersburg - why has this been passed in st p particularly? it seems rather out-of-character (certainly compared to moscow).

also, has anyone read the masha gessen book on putin? i've enjoyed her guardian pieces from russia but don't know much more

There's genuine dissatisfaction with Putin, and it's growing, but he is still enormously popular. The demonstrations against him are real but they're a small minority at the moment. As polls showed, the strongest anti-Putin faction remains the Communists, not the supposedly 'liberal' Prokhorov.

His success is often blamed, rather patronisingly, on "less educated voters" but there's no getting away from the fact that life expectancy in his first two terms increased by ten years. It's not the kind of thing people forget easily.

The middle-class anger in Moscow and, to a lesser extent St Petersburg, will continue to build, though. Putin stopped the rot and curbed the power of the oligarchs, to some degree, but hasn't really been willing or able to completely transform the culture of corruption that permeates business and politics. The idea that a multi-billionaire who founded a magazine called 'Snob' was ever going to put up a real challenge was ludicrous, though.

Hate to say it but the Guardian's Russia coverage has been abysmal for years - primarily down to the influence of Luke H@rding. Might give Masha Gessen's book a go, though.

What's the balance of the Russian economy, SV? And how is its tax system?

What I don't have any idea of and feel I should is what kind of jobs these middle-class-against-Putin do. I'd expect any progress-to-democracy to emerge most naturally, if it ever does, from growth of sectors which have economic interests which aren't natural resources/public sector, i.e. which don't rely on the oligarchy in some way. And also from the govt relying on those sectors for taxation. But I don't know whether such sectors exist.

(and I guess also, does 'public sector' necessarily entail 'pro putin', or is the Russian civil service a more independent entity along the lines of the UK's?)

I think it’s a difficult thing to get an accurate picture of.

Natural resources, manufacturing, agriculture and state-sponsored activities like education and health dominate the bulk of the country – it’s never been clear to me where Moscow and St Petersburg draw their resources from. Ostensibly, they look like everywhere from London to Lisbon – property, service sector, finance, retail, etc but a lot of the underlying drivers are elsewhere. I’m not sure there’s much that is truly independent of either the oligarchs or, at some level, the hand of local or national politicians.

The primary challenge for Putin at the moment is arguably rising expectations. Russia under Yeltsin was a nightmare for vast swathes of the population – Putin turned it back into a more-or-less functional country. Which is fine, but after a decade in power people start to ask why the cost of living is comparable to, or higher than, Western Europe but the wages, crime and corruption remain at levels that wouldn’t be tolerated in any Western European country.

“Public sector” doesn’t necessarily mean pro-Putin – there are lots of teachers and doctors taking part in the protests – but there is meant to be less of a culture of independence away from the major cities. It’s often said that there’s an implicit pressure to be a member of the ruling party but it’s hard to know how often that’s overstated.

There’s no viable opposition to get behind, though. Independent candidates need vast wealth to challenge, and are implicitly distrusted, and current centrist parties, other than United Russia (Yabloko, etc) are shambolic. It’s difficult to see that changing significantly in the medium term.

Hate to say it but the Guardian's Russia coverage has been abysmal for years - primarily down to the influence of Luke H@rding. Might give Masha Gessen's book a go, though.

fwiw, i've just remembered who Masha Gessen is and i'd avoid her book. She's been banging the anti-Putin drum for years, occasionally with good cause, but she is guilty of overstating the case, using thin evidence and sraight-up rumour as the basis for arguments and, most damningly in my view, being utterly disingenuous about the previous regime. Her view is that Putin's rise was the point at which it all went wrong for a happy, increasingly-prosperous and broadly democratic Russia, which is the most transparent nonsense imaginable.

ah ok, that's the kind of thing i wanted to be wary of.

i'm going to see khodorkovsky tonight...

The previews suggest it's heavily skewed in his favour but it might still be interesting.

The real issue with Khodorkovsky isn't that he's innocent (he is guilty, and of much worse than he was charged with) but that his prosecution was selective. I'd be interested to know how much of that is reflected in the film.

Ok, having just read the Guardian Q&A between the director and Luke H@rding i can safely say that i will not be seeing the film, lest my head explode with RAGE before the final reel.

Seriously, fuck these people.

it was interesting, it was v one-sided, i would like to know who funded it, and i did not take to the narrator particularly. i did take to the surprise hippo, also nina kraviz popping up entirely unexpectedly

would like to know more about your antipathy SV - i'm not knowledgeable enough here really

Part of it stems from the way in which Yukos was bought in the first place. Khodorkovsky paid $300m for state assets worth tens of billions in a rigged auction. As part of the deal, he paid huge bribes to Yeltsin and a series of fixers which helped Yeltsin buy the 1996 election. He had an approval rating of something like 3% shortly beforehand and used every undemocratic trick in the book to stay in power.

It was part of a bigger picture but deals like the Yukos one helped transfer almost all of the worthwhile national assets into the hands of a few people, most of them gangsters or black marketeers. The quality of life in Russia went through the floor - over the term of the Yeltsin government i think life expectancy dropped by about ten years. Hospitals went without medicine, children went without food, etc. All the while, the likes of Khodorkovsky were turning themselves into some of the richest people in the world.

It wasn't enough, though. When Vladimir Petukhov, the mayor of Nefteyugansk in Siberia, started to point out that the council couldn't pay wages or for basic services because of the rampant tax evasion going on at Yukos, he was machine-gunned in the street. It was one of a series of murders Khodorkovsky's head of security was convicted of - all of people who were proving a nuisance to Yukos. Only a fraction went to court though. They were killing anyone who stood in their way. They certainly weren't unique in that - people like Berezovsky and Abramovich were doing the same, but it sticks in the craw to see Khodorkovsky fawned over for his charity work and his commitment to democracy.

thanks - i did eye-roll a bit at tuschi saying that MK was neither angel nor devil, b/c there sure wasn't a great deal of emphasis on his own misdemeanours, and a bit too much on a romanticised "redemptive" angle (bolstered by the footage of him looking all serene and in-control in the courtroom).

i did find the info about MK taking advice from a US PR firm to "clean up" his image quite interesting - sorosesque, the idea of the benevolent pro-democracy billionaire (the ideological underpinnings of that usually being glossed over...)

PR agents (Bell Pottinger in particular) have been instrumental in the management of the oligarchs' image.

Lord Bell was a special advisor to Yeltsin, arranged the protests in London when Khordokovsky was arrested and has done extensive work with Boris Berezovsky. They spoon feed stories to the press and crack down hard with the threat of legal action when negative stuff appears. It's clearly effective over here but i'm not sure it does their clients much good in Russia.

Putin trumps Chuck Norris in black belt stakes

https://www.amazon.com/Putin-Nesting-Presidents-Donald-Vladimir/dp/B072J9QJ49/ref=pd_sbs_21_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=9EFN5D0RH5DVXNFSRQNW

If you could take two people with you on a weekend away, who would you choose? Putin chose his defence minister & the head of the FSB, Russia’s security service. pic.twitter.com/RG8lwkBzGZ

— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) August 28, 2018