Clara Ferreira Marques, Columnist

Vladimir Putin's Strategy Is All About Himself

The president’s annual speech was a pre-election pitch with few concrete new ideas and plenty of old tropes. Stagnation and belligerence mix poorly.

April 22, 2021 at 10:00 AM UTC

By Clara Ferreira Marques

Clara Ferreira Marques is a managing editor for Commodities and Energy in Asia. Previously, she was a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and editorial board member.

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Photographer: Alexey Druzhinin/AFP via Getty Images

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“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” That’s the opportunistic Tancredi’s advice on how to manage political turbulence in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s 1958 classic “The Leopard.”

Vladimir Putin is trying to hang on by doing the exact opposite.