Putin is Back in the USSR

To understand the future of Russia, take a look back at the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash.

As the world watches, it seems two superpowers are inching ever closer to war. Average everyday Americans and Russians may hope for another Cold War, rather than a hot one, but a nation’s leaders don’t always know where a conflict might end.

What is Vladimir Putin thinking? What is he planning next? Much depends on Russia’s leadership maintaining strict discipline and cool-headed logic. With the stalemate in Ukraine stretching on, an old adage is bound to come into play: What can’t last forever has to end sometime.

What is Putin’s ultimate plan?

To understand Vladimir Putin, you have to know what was happening in the world when he was 20.

“He was born, you will remember, in 1729,” G.M. Young told The British Academy of London in 1943. “But a man’s birth year is only of importance because it directs us to look for what was happening in the world when he was twenty.”

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born on October 7, 1952, in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. He grew up in a working-class family and showed an interest in sports, particularly martial arts, from a young age. After graduating from Leningrad State University in 1975 with a law degree, he joined the Soviet security…