"The received story of Putin's two decades plus in power was of his tolerance of a monstrously corrupt system. The trade-off with the oligarchs was they were allowed to keep much of their fortunes so long as they paid the master of the Kremlin homage and tithes. And they had to keep their snouts out of power. Or else. But that description masks what's really going on. Putin is stealing Russia's wealth, big time, personally, but he cannot be seen to be doing so – psychologically, he hates the idea of being caught out – so he employs proxies to do the stealing for him. True, the oligarchs emerged from the road-crash of the Soviet Union's implosion and Boris Yeltsin's alcoholic incompetence. But with Yeltsin out of the way, a new president had an opportunity to strip the oligarchs of their ill-gotten and obscene wealth and start afresh. Instead, Putin cemented the oligarch system because it best suited his secret urge to take things that rightfully belonged to others."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
pp. 146-147
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Sweeney_(journalist)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
John Sweeney (journalist)
126 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by John Sweeney (journalist) →
Related Quotes
"I look like an exploding tomato and shout like a jet engine and every time I see it, it makes me cringe."
"One of my political heroes is the former head of the IRA Martin McGuinness."
"This is a horror story – a true one – about a monster who came to be president of a country."
"To write anything about Ceausescu without discussing his secret police is like Hamlet without the Prince, everybody e…"
"His tongue could not get round seemingly simple phrases like tutulor, a form of address meaning 'to everybody'. When …"
"The effect of Pacepa's defection on Ceausescu's mental state was to destabilise him even more. He became quite crazy …"
"To understand the extraordinary fact of Ceausescu's monolithic power, and the otherwise incomprehensible lack of resi…"
"For most of its history Romania has been divided, skewered and kebabed by a succession of foreign invaders and master…"
"It enjoyed the material and spiritual backing of the German Nazis and the Fascists under Mussolini, and combined Jew-…"
"NO, TOMMY, YOU STOP NOW!!! NO, LISTEN TO ME!!! YOU WERE NOT THERE-AT THE BEGINNING-OF-THAT-INTERVIEW!!! YOU-WERE-NOT-…"