VLADIMIR PUTIN - As seen by the Russians

Action Magazine Special Issue

For more than twenty years, Vladimir Putin has established himself as a key figure in global political affairs. Some hate him, others are devoted to him. In any case, he leaves no one indifferent. The war in Ukraine, which has been officially ongoing since 2022 but began as early as 2014, has unleashed in the West an unprecedented wave of indignation and hatred towards Russia and its leader. Almost all Western media took the side of the Ukrainian camp with no desire for objectivity. Of course, Russia is not a democracy in the sense we understand in Europe or the United States, but many other countries in the world are in the same situation. Is there reason, for this, to reject an entire people and condemn them to eternal damnation?

Previous generations, who had known the price to be paid for two world wars, knew full well how far they could go in provocation and intimidation. Today, the attentive observer has the disagreeable impression that the world's leaders have lost their minds and wish to plunge us into the abyss.

The best way to get to know oneself is to seek to understand others. Who in the West knows the Russian people? Who knows Vladimir Putin? Very few people, in reality. That is why we wished to seek to understand the opinion and the vision that a majority of Russians may have of their president.

This special issue does not in any way claim to be a piece of propaganda in favour of Putin's Russia, but rather an instrument designed to reflect on the way of thinking of a people who, whatever one may say, remains a great people with a thousand-year-old culture and a courage that History cannot deny.