In an interview more than two decades ago, Vladimir Putin described his younger self, with a hint of self-congratulation, as “a hooligan.” When the interviewer asked if he was exaggerating about his tendency to get into brawls as a schoolboy, Putin took offense.“You are trying to insult me,” he said. “I was a real thug.”Masha Gessen, a Russian American journalist and Moscow native, recounts this exchange in a 2012 biography, “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin,” which was praised as “part psychological profile, part conspiracy study” in The New York Times Book Review . I mean, the book is not recent, and he was quite sure then that Putin was at war with the West at that point. "This is what it communicates: that this is somebody who has no desire to control his temper. I think my favorite book of his is called 'The Post-Communist Mafia State,' which pretends to be about Hungary, but is the best book for understanding postcommunist Russia and how the regime works.”

Source: Economic Times March 26, 2022 23:57 UTC