The key to understanding Putin? He knows he will outlast Western leaders

Many believe that history is largely determined by the personal relationships between world leaders. Vladimir Putin’s 25-year interaction with foreign leaders provides a fascinating case study of that theory.

The Russian president recently invited Narendra Modi to a private dinner at his home, and the Indian prime minister proclaimed to be very touched by the gesture. China’s Xi Jinping has called Putin his best friend. At the 2024 BRICS summit, Putin said friendships such as these provide the basis for a “new world order.” 

In the past, more adversarial leaders got a different treatment. 

There was evidence Putin played psychological games with German chancellor Angela Merkel, for example. In a 2007 meeting in Sochi in which they discussed energy supplies to Europe, the Russian president brought in his large Labrador. Putin knew that Merkel was terrified of dogs — the result of a dog attack years before — and it unsettled her during their talk. 

In Putin’s Journey, a new two-hour CBC documentary marking his quarter-century in power, former Canadian foreign minister Peter MacKay said he was shocked by Putin’s behaviour with Merkel. 

“It speaks to a dark nature, a character flaw in that man that crosses all lines in terms of diplomacy and just human nature,” MacKay said.

Soviet-born Australian journalist Zoya Sheftalovich, who writes for Politico Europe, told CBC that Putin “is well-briefed, he knows what people’s buttons are and he pushes them.” 

Konstantin Eggert, a Lithuania-based journalist who works for the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, said “he evidently wants to dominate all the time. He wants to prove that he’s the toughest guy in the room. He always has to have someone to humiliate.”

Putin’s treatment of foreign leaders seems to be informed by the knowledge that he will outlast them. He is playing a long game to achieve his desired results. And he is likely relishing Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency, especially since Trump has said so many negative things about Ukraine and NATO.

Luke Harding, the former Moscow bureau chief for the Guardian and author of Invasion: The Inside Story of Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival, says Putin “thinks that Western leaders are gullible and short-lived.”

“They’re sort of colourful butterflies that flutter around for a bit and then get wiped out when winter comes in. Whereas Putin, who we know is close to outlasting Stalin, doesn’t have to worry about pesky things like elections, and he knows what he’ll be doing in two years’ time, four years’ time.”

‘We badly misjudged Putin’

Shortly after Putin became president in 2000, George W. Bush was elected president of the United States. He came to meet Putin at a summit in Slovenia, where he shared his instant judgment of his Russian counterpart, famously saying, “I looked the man in the eye … I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

“I think George W. Bush regrets having said that now, because it’s not clear exactly where Putin’s soul is,” John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and national security adviser who met Putin numerous times, told CBC. 

“But [the comment] was indicative of the optimism that we felt that the Cold War was over, that we could find a way to bridge the differences and work together against what we saw as common threats,” Bolton said. “I think in retrospect we can see that we badly misjudged Putin.”

It wasn’t only the Americans who seemed to fall under Putin’s spell. On a visit to the United Kingdom in 2003, he was given the royal treatment, touring London beside the Queen in a horse-drawn carriage. It was a shock to Russian dissident journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza. 

“Literally in the same week that Vladimir Putin’s government pulled the plug on the last independent television channel [in Russia], he was treated to a lavish state visit to London and a ride with the Queen of England,” Kara-Murza told CBC. 

He points out that Putin was also having political opponents arrested and imprisoned. “It was clear from the very beginning, and yet … Western democratic countries deliberately chose to turn a blind eye on all these domestic authoritarian abuses.”

CBC requested an interview with Putin, but his press secretary declined the invitation. 

Greater interest in Ukraine

Beginning in 2012, Putin became more forceful with Western countries, something that became apparent in his first private meeting with then-French president Francois Hollande. Putin was concerned about the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe and the missiles installed there. 

As Hollande told CBC, “He asked for a piece of paper, which is quite rare for a meeting between heads of state. And on it, he drew a map of Europe and put the missiles that were positioned in the central part of Europe that directly threatened his security. He already wanted to play the victim — ‘I’m under attack’ — to better justify what he might have to do to supposedly defend himself.” 

Hollande was struck by Putin’s psychological tactics in their personal meetings. “It’s no coincidence that he trained with the KGB. The KGB was all about ‘I threaten you, but I also embrace you in an almost personal relationship.’ Always playing the double game: ‘I threaten you, but I’m ready to talk.'”

By 2013, Putin had turned his attention back to Ukraine, urging pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych to cancel a proposed new treaty with Europe. Ukraine’s majority pro-Western population rebelled, and Kyiv’s Maidan Square filled with anti-Russian protesters, egged on by European and American politicians.

Yanukovych tried to put down the Maidan protest with police violence, but the demonstrators held their ground. After many casualties, Yanukovych fled the country on a helicopter in the dead of night. 

Politico journalist Sheftalovich says it was a hard blow for Putin.

“He saw Ukraine as a part of Russia, and he saw Euro Maidan as essentially the first part of a potential uprising that could eventually end in him being removed from power. So it was unacceptable to him that Euro Maidan had swept in and that these protests had removed his man from the job.”

Amid joyous celebrations in Kyiv, Putin was plotting his revenge. He had decided to break up Ukraine by seizing the Crimean Peninsula in the south and the majority Russian-speaking areas in the east of the country. In 2014, he deployed Russian soldiers without any markings on their uniforms to Crimea. They became known as the “little green men.” 

When asked about them, Putin said they had nothing to do with Russia. Meanwhile, Russian soldiers and Russian-backed separatists began attacking Ukraine’s army in the eastern Russian-speaking areas of the Donbas.

Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion who gave up the sport to work in opposition to Putin’s regime, saw Crimea as a turning point. 

“That was the best way to tell the West that, you know, he’s no longer playing by the rules…. Annexing territory is just a very important element of destroying the world order. Dictators, they’re opportunists. Even Hitler was an opportunist, or Stalin. This is what made them really strong. So smell it, grab it, attack.”

A fateful G20 meeting

Once again, the Western response to Putin’s actions seemed weak. He was still invited to 70th-anniversary commemorations of the Normandy invasion in France in June 2014. Hollande greeted him as an honoured guest. 

The new, pro-Western Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, was also there. Putin agreed to have a brief meeting with Poroshenko, who knew what he was up against. 

“I have several recommendations for those who have a plan to meet with Putin,” he told CBC. “Point No. 1, don’t trust Putin. He is a KGB officer who specially learned to lie. Second, please don’t be afraid of Putin, because if you’re afraid of Putin, this is feeding him. Putin will go only as far as we together allow him to go.”

At a G20 meeting a few months later in Australia, then-Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper tried a tough approach. 

According to MacKay, “Vladimir Putin came into this private session with other world leaders and went immediately to our prime minister … who had been quite vocal about Putin and his obvious plans for Crimea. Putin made a beeline for him, put his hand out … Prime minister Harper then looked at him and said, ‘You need to get out of Crimea.’ And Putin said, ‘We’re not in Crimea.’ 

“That was the beginning of the end for Russia’s participation in the G8, because everybody in the room knew that he was lying.”

Amid the mounting casualties and stalemate in the war with Ukraine, Putin seems to have returned to his waiting game as he watched the clock wind down on the term of President Joe Biden, who led the NATO campaign in defence of Ukraine. 

While many Western leaders were shocked by Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Hollande said, “There is a great misunderstanding between Europeans and Putin, and more broadly, the West and Putin. 

“Europeans don’t want to go to war. For them, war has a terrible history, the history of the 20th century, and there is no reason to think that war is possible on the continent today. 

“But for Putin, war is possible. That’s the disconnect. We are peaceful, democratic nations that don’t like death. Whereas for Putin, death is part of the action.”

WATCH | The full documentary Putin’s Journey: