Quotes from "The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin"

 

The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin by Steven Lee Myers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is very timely for today's events.
Quote from page 474 describes events in 2014 with war in Crimea, Eastern Ukraine and just after Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine:

"Entire sections of the [Russian] economy, including banking and energy, now faced sanctions, not just the officials and friends close to Putin. By the middle of 2014, capital flight had reached $75 billion for the year as those with cash sought safe harbors offshore; by the end of the year $150 billion had fled the country. The economy, already slowing, slumped badly as investments withered. The value of the ruble crashed, despite efforts by the central bank to shore it up. The prices of oil slumped--which Putin blamed on a conspiracy between the United States and Saudi Arabia--and that strained the budget, depleting the reserves that Putin had steadfastly built up throughout his years in power. Russia plunged into an economic crisis as bad as the one in 1998 and 2009. Putin’s tactics had backfired. Many in the West cheered, seeing the economic crisis as evidence of the self-inflicted pain of Putin’s actions, but the isolation also fed Putin’s view that the crises confronting Russia economically and diplomatically were part of a vast conspiracy effort to weaken Russia—to weaken his rule.”

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