Simon Sebag Montefiore Quotes

The only successor to President Putin is President Putin himself and we could of course dream about President Putin stepping down voluntarily and picking out successor which would be probably as bad as him.

You have a political elite that has been in power since 1979. Typically what happens with this elite, and it has happened in Iran, is that they get more and more out of touch with the realities of the ordinary citizens.

The United States must look beyond Mr. Putin. His regime may appear imposing, but it is rotting inside. His Russia is not a great power on par with America. It is a gas station run by a corrupt, autocratic regime.

On Putin's order, corrupt apparatchiks and crony oligarchs rob Russians of their nation's wealth and resources.

Zedillo's lack of political savvy is a personal flaw. But his insulated and elitist governing style reflect the age-old vices of the political system itself.

The problem with Russia is not corruption per se, or even Putin per se. Russian government is not corrupt because Vladimir Putin has absolute power. Russian government has been corrupt and will always be as long as anyone has absolute power.

Russia is a mafia state today, and Putin is its top godfather.

Russian Parliament today is a bunch of puppets that just fall in with the instructions from Kremlin.

I think very poorly of United Russia. United Russia is the party of corruption, the party of crooks and thieves.

Putin needs strong moves to keep the country as one. There is some criticism that he is centralizing power, but in Russia, if you don't centralize power, you have the risk of losing the country.

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.

If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.

Hard men present hard choices - none more so than Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia.

We have more billionaires than any country but the United States. And Putin can imprison any one of them at a moment’s notice. Do you think he is poor?

Russian elites believe that he [President Vladimir Putin] serves the same function as the Czars of old, keeping diverse political clans and their leaders (the boyars) in balance, preventing the civil war or chaos that a country of Russia’s vast size and relative emptiness would face if it were left open to competition by those who retain loyal militias.

Concentration of power in a political machine is bad..

…ruling elites in many liberal societies and especially the United States, where money and special interests have created a corrupt political class that is out-of-touch with ordinary people, interested mostly in enriching themselves, and immune to accountability.

In power for 16 years now, Mr. Putin and his global propaganda machine aggressively promote the idea that democracy is a chaotic mess that only the hero Putin can save Russia from falling into.

You cannot compare any leaders in our country to what Vladimir Putin has done.

Banana republics are run on cronyism.

Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power.

We have a political culture of intimidation, of favoring, of patronage, and of fear, and that is no way for a community to be governed.

For the last ten years, I've been trying to avoid getting killed by Putin's regime, and there already exists a trail of dead bodies connected to its desire to see me dead.

The only game [Vladimir] Putin can play is to establish a lifelong dictatorship in the country, at first de facto and finally also de jure. In this case, [Dmitri] Medvedev is an interim figure bound to assist Putin in his plan to guarantee a smooth transition to a new term in office.

In Russia, Vladimir Putin is viewed as a progressive Democrat.