How Putin ‘stole $1TRILLION from his people, went from weakling to monster’

DAILY MAIL

Once, he was seen as our best hope for permanent peace between West and East. Today, he is the embodiment of evil, a monstrous dictator who threatens a nuclear holocaust that could obliterate Europe.

But when Vladimir Putin was named as successor to the drunken president Boris Yeltsin a quarter of a century ago, on New Year’s Eve in 1999, he was a virtual unknown outside Russian politics. And even inside the country, his poll approval rating was low, with less than a third of the country backing his policies.

The former KGB intelligence officer had been the shambolic superpower’s acting prime minister for less than five months and was regarded both by the public and by the gangster oligarchs who controlled the economy as a political weakling.

Yeltsin saw him as reliable and obedient but lacking any sort of imagination or vision. Few others were so generous in their assessment. To them, Putin was totally without charisma, a dull bureaucrat who was essentially unelectable because he had no appeal to voters.

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