Zygar’s book lists several sources inside the government who say that Putin was so convinced that the backstabbing and politicking of the hit Netflix series House of Cards accurately mirrored western politics that he instructed his colleagues to watch it.
Zygar claims that for Putin, the scheming protagonist Frank Underwood “represents the typical American politician” – which is why he prefers to support figures such as Italy’s former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi or Donald Trump, who are more “practical” and “cynical”, says Zygar.
Russia’s decision to illegally annex Crimea, formerly part of Ukraine, was not part of a long-term strategy to “reclaim” the peninsula but was rushed through in three months, the book claims. [...]
The most important event shaping modern political life in Russia was the staging of opposition protests in winter 2011-12, when thousands of Muscovites took to the streets to protest against the government.
According to Zygar, this left Putin with one conclusion: that his support base was no longer the middle-class intellectual elite living in the capital, but the working-class heartlands across the country, who were “more conservative, more religious, distrustful of reformers and feel more nostalgia for the Soviet period” – a legacy evident in many of Putin’s subsequent policies.
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