"YOU, PUTIN": NEMTSOV "WHACKS" BACK

"YOU, PUTIN"

a.k.a.

"THE AUTHORITIES"

are responsible if one of us

gets killed --

or better still, for keeping us

from getting killed in the first place --

BORIS NEMTSOV

IN THE GOVERNMENT

1998

Today, four days before the Russian presidential election, Prime Minister Putin, while on the one hand promising the electorate a brighter future by 2020 -- when he could still be president -- with the other did a bit of jujitsu on his opponents.

From the beginning, from when he was Prime Minister the first time, Putin has been dogged by suspicions that he was not above using deadly dirty tricks to achieve power. Today he was accusing the opposition of being ready to use a "sacrificial murder" to bring him low. They will, he said, "whack someone and then blame the authorities for it," Reuters reported.

Boris Nemtsov, a former First Deputy Prime Minister under Boris Yeltsin (see photograph above), and a long-time and vocal opponent of Putin's (see here), did not let this ploy go unanswered. Nemtsov, whom Kathy Lally of the Washington Post calls "a foe Putin appears to despise more than most" (a badge of honor?), called the Prime Minister on this latest form of campaign demonizing (mirror-imaging?): "If the head of the federal government, who controls all intelligence agencies, makes a public statement that he has information about such a provocation and such a crime, he must do everything to prevent it and not just publicly scare Russians."

"I, PUTIN" here

A recent profile of Nemtsov, here

"I, PUTIN": A FILM AND A PHOTOGRAPH

"ICH

PUTIN"

"I, PUTIN"

Vladimir Vladimirovich

Tonight, in Germany, on ARD TV, was the first broadcast of the first part of a multi-part documentary on Vladimir Putin: "Ich, Putin: Ein Porträt" ("I, Putin: A Portrait"). Der Spiegel has a long piece on the filmmaker, Hubert Seipel, and the film, here. The website for the film is here; to watch the video, click "Videos" on the left of the page. Some commentary (in German) can be found here and here.

A couple of comments from Spiegel Online: "German documentary filmmaker Hubert Seipel was recently granted unprecedented access to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for his film 'I, Putin.'" And "The world is used to images of Putin as a virile master or Judo and no-holds-barred political infighting. But the films shows [sic] Putin in a much different light, as a lonely, exhausted man cut off from the world by his job and stubbornly fending off physical decline."

Since there is an emphasis on the aging leader, who is to turn sixty in October but is looking to take on at least one more six-year stint as President shortly, above is a close-up and personal photograph of Vladimir Putin not long after he turned fifty.

More Putin here, and much more Putin here.

The initial episode uploaded to Youtube, here.

Lyudmila Putin, here.

Some pushback to Putin, here.