I often wonder if the course of history would have been radically different if Yeltsin had chosen someone else to replace him. The question is, of course, academic. History is full of ifs, but also possibles.
I can say one thing with confidence: in twenty-five years I have seen different Putins.
And I’m not the only one like that.
“The Putin I met, who did good things, created the Russia-NATO Council, is very, very different from this almost megalomaniac now,” former NATO chief Lord Robertson told me in 2023.
“The man who stood next to me in May 2002, next to me, and said that Ukraine is a sovereign and independent nation-state that will make its own security decisions, is now the man who says that (Ukraine) is not is a nation state.
“I think that Vladimir Putin has a very thin skin and huge ambitions for his country. The Soviet Union was recognized as the second superpower in the world. Russia cannot make any claims in this direction. And I think that ate away at his ego.”
That’s one possible explanation for the change we’re seeing in Putin: His fervent drive to “make Russia great again” (and make up for what many see as Moscow’s Cold War defeat) has put Russia on an inevitable collision course with its neighbors — and the West.
The Kremlin has another explanation.
From the speeches he gives, the comments he makes, it seems that Putin is driven by resentment, a general feeling that Russia has been lied to and disrespected for years, that the West has dismissed its security concerns.
But does Putin himself believe that he fulfilled Yeltsin’s demand to “protect Russia”?
Recently I had to find out.
