Legend has it that Vladimir Putin’s grandfather, beaten by his 8-year-old grandson in a game of chess, continued to move the pieces despite the checkmate he suffered. And to the young Vladimir who asked him why, grandfather Putin replied “And who said that?”. “They are the rules”, protested the child. “What rules? A true man sets the rules for himself “short cut grandfather Spiridion. True or false (especially if false) this story told by the Russian leader himself seems a metaphor that precedes the vision of power that from 2000 – date of his, in sudden appearance, rise to power – distinguishes Vladimir Putin’s choices. It is an episode, one among many, that Giorgio Dell’Arti tells in ‘The wars of Putin’, published by La nave di Teseo (pp. 151) and constructed in the form of an imaginary dialogue around a life and a career – as an employee, as a spy, as a leader pushed by the oligarchs and finally as a ‘new tsar’ – in which it is difficult to distinguish between myth and truth.
Because Vladimir Putin – as a true KGB agent, his ambition already as a minor – knows that secrecy and mystery are his strength. In the past, the Russian president has talked about himself in public: but as he explains Dell’Arti, these are stories that are almost too ‘good’ to be true, or in any case too functional to build the myth of the man of the people. Although then, as the effort of power becomes heavier – explains the author – “the empathy that so conquered the voters has been replaced by an almost bored detachment, which borders on annoyance”.
It is the loneliness of the dictators, who go from challenge to challenge, cloaking themselves in invincibility until the final bet, which is lost only by the dizzying fall. And it is no coincidence that – even here – the comparison that immediately comes to mind is that of Napoleon (whose story is closely intertwined with the history of Russia).
But Dell’Arti’s book is not only a ‘sum’ of anecdotes or circumstances, sometimes curious, sometimes disconcerting, but also a reminder of everything that preceded the invasion of Ukraine. Because – as is becoming increasingly clear – today’s is only the culmination of a path that was very clear to Putin and that basically he never hid, but that the West has not been able or wanted to see.
The ‘distractions’, the involuntary complicities, the overt and hidden interests, the inaction, the underestimation: there is a long list of mistakes committed while the Kremlin unfolded its ‘imperial’ strategy, from internal repression to attacks on Georgia, from Crimea in Kiev. The book therefore provides a quick background for framing what we did wrong and, therefore, what we can no longer accept. Because after all – and it may seem paradoxical for a spy who came from the cold – Vladimir Putin is perhaps the most ‘transparent’ leader of these decades.