STOCKHOLM – Under President Vladimir Putin, cronyism has replaced Russia’s once-burgeoning capitalism. If Putin lives by any motto, it is this: “To my friends, anything; for my enemies, the law.”
In his 2000 “autobiography,” “First Person,” Putin reveals what “counts most” to him. “I have a lot of friends,” he tells an interviewer, “but only a few people are really close to me. They have never gone away. They have never betrayed me, and I haven’t betrayed them either.”
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