, Columnist
Saudi Arabia Is Putinizing, Not Modernizing
The world's two most important oil dictatorships have more in common than you'd think.
The reform diversion.
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It was perhaps inevitable that the Saudi royal purge, in which 11 princes and dozens of bureaucrats stand accused of corruption, would be compared with Russian President Vladimir Putin's and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping's highly public, and highly selective, anti-graft campaigns. But Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who initiated the crackdown, resembles Putin in other dangerous ways, too.