Reading Russia: The Dying Mutant

Issue Date April 2009
Volume 20
Issue 2
Page Numbers 52-55
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The corporatist kleptocracy being erected by Russian President Vladimir Putin is profoundly misunderstood in the West. This model dooms Russia to economic degradation and margin-alization. The current global crisis has made this truth painfully clear. The artificially created image of a threatening West (and U.S. in particular) is now becoming the sole ideological justification for Putin’s rule. Cool realism and tough patience are needed to deal with Putin’s mutant. It would be foolish and shameful of the U.S. to sell out hopes and aspirations of new democracies to a dying mutant for favors this creature has neither intention nor ability to deliver.

About the Author

Andrei Piontkovsky is leading researcher at the Institute for Systems Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. His books in English include Another Look into Putin’s Soul (2006) and Russian Identity (2008).

View all work by Andrei Piontkovsky