Why Vladimir Putin cannot retire
He has too many enemies, and too many cronies who depend on him
SHORTLY AFTER becoming president in 2000, the 48-year-old Vladimir Putin pondered how he would one day leave office. Riding in a presidential limousine through Moscow at night, he confided to an interviewer: “I very much hope that one day I will manage to go back to a normal life and that I will have some private future. I can’t say that the life of a monarch inspires me. A democracy is much more viable.”
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “The prisoner in the Kremlin”
From the March 14th 2020 edition
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