Vladimir Putin Quotes

Quotes by and about Vladimir Putin

(Continued from his main entry on the site.)

Putin: "At one point I really wanted to be a pilot. ... But then books and spy movies ... took hold of my imagination. [I saw] how one man's effort could achieve what whole armies could not. [From then on] I wanted to be a spy."

Putin: "[When I was young] I didn't try to command people. It was more important to preserve my independence. If I had to compare it with my adult life, I would say that the role I played as a kid was like the role of the judicial branch, and not the executive."

[Larry King: "What happened to the Kursk submarine?"]
Putin: "It sank."

Sergei Roldugin: "[When Putin was young] he was terrible at making conversation. ... He is a Cicero now, compared to back then."

Der Spiegel: "[When] Putin moved into his office in St. Petersburg [he] promptly had the portrait of Lenin removed and replaced with one of Peter the Great."

Michael A. McFaul: "Putin is adept at short-term tactical responses to setbacks, but less talented at long-term strategy."

Garry Kasparov: "Putin is like Al Capone."

Ben Shapiro: "Putin ... is a character out of fiction, an uber-macho former Soviet thug running a massive, expansionist kleptocracy. The man stages photographs riding horses barechested and hunting tigers. His enemies find themselves on the wrong end of radioactive poisoning."

Anna Politkovskaya: "If you want to go on working as a journalist [in Russia], it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise it can be death."