A Brief History
Today, we celebrate the founding of History and Headlines on September 22, 2013. We now have over 200 articles on our site and so what better way to commemorate these milestones than by digging deeper into the bizarre and sordid history of the leader of a nuclear armed nation possessing more territory than any other country in the world?
(Update, March 2020: We are now 6 1/2 years old and have well over 2000 articles, as well as a YouTube channel. We have also just added more information about Putin to this article and you can see our other Putin related articles by clicking the link.)
(Update, February 2022: Vladimir Putin has really outdone himself this time, with an unprovoked and unjustified invasion of the Ukraine. The brazen and cruel move in spite of universal condemnation by the rest of the world speaks of not only tremendous disregard for the rule of law, but perhaps even a darker side, one that is possibly maniacal or mentally ill. The vicious invasion is aimed at the total subjugation of the Ukraine and the annexation of that nation into Russia. While in these early stages, it is hard to predict the outcome of international sanctions against Putin and Russia, it would seem that this ill-considered aggression will result in economic ruin for Putin, his buddies, and the Russian state. Unfortunately, Russian retaliation is likely to cause severe economic harm to the rest of the world as well. We fervently hope this development does not result in nuclear war.
Digging Deeper
8. Interference with American elections and politics.
Despite troubling and unexplained denials of President Donald Trump, Putin and his Russian internet trolls have definitely interfered with the 2016 US presidential election and are doing more of the same with the 2020 elections. On top of that, Putin’s trolls are sowing discord in the US by suckering Americans into divided sides by race, religion, economic class and politics with bogus websites and social media manipulation. Putin is engaging in a high level of internet cyber war that is largely being ignored by the Trump administration.
7. Putin dismisses his government.
In February of 2020, Vladimir Putin fired the Prime Minister and virtually his entire cabinet, creating a new government more to his liking in a bald faced move to consolidate his power, looking to stay in power longer. Not a surprise, he did something similar in 2004 and has remained in power since. The moves are seen as part of his plan, which included a constitutional change, to allow him to remain in power past his otherwise term limited date of 2024. Currently 67 years old (as of March 23, 2020), Putin may be able to retain his dictatorship of Russia for quite a few years yet to come. After all, he is constantly conniving ways to consolidate and extend his power.
6. Putin “Stole” Robert Kraft’s Super Bowl Ring
In 2005, Robert Kraft, owner of the American football team The Patriots, had the opportunity to meet with Vladimir Putin. During this meeting, Kraft decided to show Putin his Super Bowl ring, valued at $25,000. According to Kraft, “I took out the ring and showed it to [Putin], and he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring…I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out….I really didn’t [want to]. I had an emotional tie to the ring, it has my name on it. I don’t want to see it on eBay.” The ring remains in Russia.
5. Putin Kissed a Boy, because WHY!?
If seeing a grown man, let a lone the leader of one of the Earth’s most powerful countries, kiss a boy’s bare skin is not weird enough, Putin’s explanation for why he kissed the boy just makes matters worse: “You know that this was not planned. People came up and I began talking to them, among them this little boy. He seemed to me very independent, sure of himself and at the same time defenseless, as a child always is, an innocent boy and a very nice little boy…I tell you honestly, I just wanted to touch him like a kitten, and that desire of mine ended in that act that you mention.” WTF?!
4. Saint Vladimir Putin
Yes, you read right! The Chapel of Russia’s Resurrection founded in 2007 by Mother Fotina as an all-woman sect believes that Putin is the reincarnation of Paul the Apostle and Saint Vladimir the Great and is himself a living saint. Not even the tsars were worshiped as living saints! Let us just hope he does not take after Saint Theodora…
3. Putin versus Pussy Riot
That is not to say that all Russian women worship Putin. Among Putin’s most vocal critics are a female punk band named Pussy Riot, founded in 2011. The group regards Putin as a dictator, which given that Putin has run Russia as either president or prime minister for the last twenty plus years, does not seem an entirely bogus allegation. The group achieved international notoriety when they protested at an Orthodox Church in Russia in February 2012. The next month, three prominent members of the group members were arrested, denied bail, convicted of hooliganism, and sentenced to two years imprisonment. Amidst international outcries, the women were eventually freed prior to the Winter Olympics held in Russia in February 2014, only to suffer subsequent assaults by angry Russians as recently as March 2014.
2. Putin Wins More Votes than Voters?
In Russia’s most recent presidential election, Putin won with some interesting support. As reporter Bill Neely notes, “look at Precinct 451 in the capital Grozny, where Putin got 1,482 votes and (former Communist leader Gennady) Zyuganov got one. Terrific vote. Except that only 1,389 people were registered to vote in the precinct. That means the turnout was 107 percent.”
1. Aggression toward Neighboring Countries
All of the above pales in comparison to Russia’s interventions in its neighbors’ political turmoil. First, Russia won a decisive victory in the Second Chechen War in the first years of Putin’s administration. Then, in August 2008, Russia invaded Georgia in a war that cost hundreds of lives and also resulted in Russian victory, despite former American presidential candidate John McCain’s claim that “We are all Georgians”. Now, we have the ongoing crisis of the Crimea, which has voted for independence and hoped for annexation by Russia. This latest conflict is perhaps the most concerning as the possibility of American involvement seems greater than what happened in 2008. Indeed, global fears of the conflict escalating are by far the most disturbing of news currently scaring the world… Update, March 2020: With Russia firmly in control of the Crimea, the land grab has spread to other parts of the Ukraine that Russia is attempting to also annex. Fighting between the Ukrainian army and Russians continues and has played a part in the American political picture that led to the impeachment of Donald Trump.
And to make matters worse, should a war erupt, we Americans no longer have Sarah Palin as governor as our first line of defense!
Question for students (and subscribers): In any event, we have already had one Crimean War, but do you think we will have another in 2014? Should Britain and America come to the Ukraine’s defense should a war break out? Would a war between the United States and Russia have to be a nuclear war? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Levine, Steve. Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2009.
Morgan, Stephen. Pussy Riot vs Putin: Revolutionary Russia. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.
Putin, Lyudmila. The Benevolent Deeds of Vladimir Putin. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.
Van Herpen, Marcel H. Putin’s Wars: The Rise of Russia’s New Imperialism. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014.
The featured image in this article, a photograph of Vladimir and Lyudmila Putin visiting the Taj Mahal, comes from the website of the President of the Russian Federation and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. In short: you are free to distribute and modify the file as long as you attribute www.kremlin.ru. Note: Works published on site before April 8, 2014 are also licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
You can also watch a video version of this article on YouTube.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="1568 http://www.crackedhistory.com/?p=1568">57 Comments
I feel as though Russia is trying to gain back land that was lost when the USSR broke up. I do not think there will be another war. I also don’t think America or the EU should get militarily involved unless innocent people are in danger.
I havent kept up with the news on this so im not sure if there will be another war. But I dont think that that America or Britain should help if there is to be a war. Nuclear War between Russia and the U.S I dont think would have to be nuclear.
I think we need to stay out of it. America is good at sticking its nose in place’s it doesn’t belong.
Look at world war 2, should we stay out of it until the last minute again?
Yes.
I feel as if America needs to stay out of it we have are own problems
We can’t keep being the world police when our own country is struggling so much.
As I am fluent Russian speaker, have been to Russia many times, and know a lot of Russia and it’s culture, I can say that this amuses me that we see Putin as such a tyrant and such, when looking at other people in history, Putin is hardly a ‘bad’ man.
Tell that to chechens, wise guy…
America should stay out of it .we would only lose more of our young men and we do not need that
I do not think we will have another Crimean war!
The United States needs to stay out of Russia’s business. We seem to get involved with many things that had nothing to directly do with us, but we get involved anyway. If the U.S wants to avoid war they should just stay out of it, until Russia shows some kind of threat to the U.S.
I think we should stay out of this situation. Why should we, American People, get involved with other people’s problems; I say stay out of it.
We really need to stay out of this. There is no reason we need to get involved, it’s not our problem.
The US shouldn’t get involved, we’re not the world police! Imagine how mad we’d be if something like this were happening near us that we were involved in and China or Russia tried to step in, we’d be IRATE!
I think America needs to stay out the current situation in Russia and Crimea. There is a very slim chance the U.S. could get involved without the threat of a nuclear war and potentially thousands of lost lives. As horrible and messed up as Putin may be, it’s not our place to step in every other countries issues.
I think we need to stay out of this. We get involved into way to many other countries business, when it has nothing to do with us, and then we end up going to war for no reason. We have our own problems we ned to worry about, not everyone else’s.
At some point America has to learn it’s place and that’s not in everyone else’s business. We have so much that needs to be fixed here. We should be trying to fix us at this point not other people. I do understand that there are some situations that grant attention but sometimes we just cross the line.
I don’t see why America thinks that it is needed to get involved in other country’s issues. We have plenty of things that we could work on instead of joining in other conflicts!
As controversial as involvement in warfare may be, I believe it is a wiser decision for America to stay out of it. We are trillions of dollars in debt from the war in Iraq, and we are still financing warfare overseas in the Middle East, even if the turmoil has softened and Osama bin Laden is dead. I don’t think that we should get involved unless we see some very unethical treatment towards the people living in Asia, such as organized death and concentration camps similar to the Holocaust. In present day America, we are faced with various economic issues such as a rapid increase in homelessness, unemployment, and not being able to afford health insurance or pay for proper medical care. That should be our biggest priority, and not to mention we should focus on the social issues regarding women by closing the pay gap and rescuing sex slaves from human traffickers. Not that this is entirely a good thing, but I would love it if there were conflicts between Russia and the Middle East, not to mention North Korea, that way Russia could take care of them for us. At least, I wish these dictators would succumb to a powerful front or lose their lives trying to defend themselves against it. As for civilians, I hope that the U.S. could at least contribute to humanitarian aid if we decide not to engage in military combat against Russia or even the Ukraine for that matter. I would like to hear about the United Nations or the European Union’s involvement as well, perhaps other countries like Canada or South Pacific regions could help as well.
I don;t think that America should get involved with this issue at all. Right now it does not involve the U.S. and it’s not a threat to us, so why even worry about it? We have too many issues in our own country to be worrying about what other countries are doing.
Honestly I think the worst thing for America to do is get itself involved in another conflict. Yes what is going on in the Crimean Peninsula is not right, yet we as a country have more important issues that pertain to Americans that need to be taken care of first.
i believe that we should stay out because there id no need to get involved into something that does not involve us. the only reason that we should get involved is if it concerns us.
I believe that we get involved in wars to a) help the less able countries and b) to protect our standing in the world, right, wrong or otherwise. As far as the USA and Russia getting into a war or conflict and it ending in a nuclear war one day is inevitable. Where there are humans there is greed, hate and destruction.
This dude is a complete jerk. I’m really surprised by some of the weird stuff that he has done. Agreeing with others, though, I must say that we should really stay out of Russia’s business as to avoid issues and potentially war. This is clearly not someone we want to mess with.
I believe we should stay out of it even though the stuff he has done is really weird and crazy. We are not involved therefor getting involved would be pointless and starting something that we don’t need to be in.
As of right now, I think we should try to stick to non-military sanctions against Russia instead of going into fight. If Russia continues to act this way towards other areas similar to Crimea, military action will be inevitable.
Putin is definitely a corrupt leader and basically holding the people hostage with the way he’s been electing himself president. I’m not sure if the war would necessarily have to be a nuclear war but who knows with Putin. Either way it would be devastating.
I think that no matter what, the United States will still intervene even if the American people vote against it. We as a country can not seem to keep our nose out of any other countries problems. So if the United States goes up against Russia, then I feel like a World War III will break out especially now that we have advanced technology that will get us further, especially in a nuclear war, which may not seem that far off.
Well first off I would like to say that Putin seems like a real scumbag. with saying that I believe if war were to break out America should step in to protect those small countries and let them achieve independence.
Putin is definitely a crooked leader. It’s clear that he elected himself and is doing whatever he wants. I don’t think the United States should get involved though.
As Americans we need to learn to not get involved into things we shouldn’t be getting involved with because when we do we always end up paying for it in the end.
I also agree that America needs to stay out of this situation.
It’s not our place to get involved in Russian foreign relations.
I do not think we need to go to war with Russia. It will cause way to many problems and make us spend more money.
We should not get involved, unless we really need to.
America needs to stay out of it or stand united with the other powers of the world to support Ukraine. If it does esculate far enough it WILL be a nuclear war.
I think if at all possible the United States should stay out of it.
I think it is probable that there could be another Crimean War. I tend to think that America should not get involved if at all possible, yet would feel someone should come to Ukraine’s defense if war did break out.
I think America should try and stay out of it, but we should get involved sooner than later if things get worse.
I think that we should mind our own business but we all know that if a war did break out the United Stated would feel the need to jump in and help.
I believe we chouldnt get involved in other peoples business and force on our self.
United States is known for helping countries in need so we mine as well help another.
I don’t think we should get involved, I think it would end up being bad for us.
Shouldn’t have signed the Budapest Memorandum then, Ukraine would still have nukes and RF would never have dared invade.
I think the US gets involved in more than we need and we can handle.
On the topic of war, I do not believe it is the answer. Peaceful negotiations should first be explored.
I can see where everyone is coming from when they think the US should stay out of foreign war, but, my sister is in the military and she kind of opened my eyes to the opposing side. The US is viewed as the superpower, and we have many allies. We have to fight for those allies in times of need, but I think there should be a limit as to how much assistance we continuously give them. So, I think that we should continue to aid our alliances, but we shouldn’t aide them in every single foreign affair.
Your eyes were unfortunately crossed. Go anywhere in the world apart from Aussie or England and try to find allies for the US. It’s a great notion, just unfortunately poorly executed. Most countries don’t necessarily hate the people of the US, just the way the country views others.
What the christ sort of opening statement is that? How does ripping into a guy that rules Russia have any relevance to the history of your site? Or the land mass of a nation?
Wow.
Just because John read the receipt wrong to you is this the way you act? Is the way you get out of your responsibilities?
Erm, sure. Way to make sense.
“Matthew graduated with a B.A. in French and history from Baldwin-Wallace College. At BW, Matthew minored in political science. He earned a Master’s in History at Kent State University and a Ph.D. in History from the Ohio State University. He teaches history at Ashland University, John Carroll University, and Kent State University at Stark.”
Apparently English wouldn’t have hurt.
Is this Gregory Stevens?
Yep. You got me!
Having “dug deeper”, I find your background on Putin rather shallow, when in fact, his time with the the KGB is far darker.
There are much more than 6 disturbing things about Putin. What a slimy evil little weirdo.