Niall Ferguson: “I don’t suppose Putin is mad. I believe energy has corrupted him. And it has additionally distanced him from truth. He obviously underestimated the Ukrainian resistance, and he obviously underestimated the chance to the Russian economic system. Those are miscalculations, now not indicators of insanity. They’re the type of miscalculations you are making if you’re very divorced from truth, since you lead the lifetime of a czar, in huge — if hideous — palaces, surrounded through people who find themselves scared of you and inform you what they suspect you wish to have to listen to.”
“If I put myself in Putin’s place, I don’t suppose he’s seeking to resurrect the Soviet Union. He’s taking a look again even additional and seeking to carry again the Russian Empire, with himself as ‘Czar Vladimir.’ It’s an ideology of conservative, orthodox nationalism that Putin gives, that has not anything to do with the Soviet legacy.”
