I find it hard to think otherwise.
And yes, Stalin was Georgian obvs, you get the point.
How does the charisma void even shape up against most Tsars? Probably not well, especially given the values of their time.
With all the horror taking place, please talk about what an awful shit Putin is, from a historical perspective, here.
Shit. Knackered the heading again. Will leave it for now
Oh GF. You make me giggle.
If you mean worst from a human lives perspective then Stalin wins for now.
Putin might be the worst since Nicholas II in terms of breaking the back of Russian power.
And at least Nicky II was going up against Imperial Germany. Russia is going down against a minor power.
Putin sees 'Kyivan Rus' as the cradle of the Russian people. So that's going back about 1000 years. A parallel could be made with Israel etc, but I'm not going to be the one to do it. All these 'cradle' places lie on about the the same longitude - including Cairo.
I think a parallel could be made with Israel.
Russian leader?
Word!
Israel at least treat their own people a fair bit better and can make better attempt to hold corrupt former leaders accountable. Their crimes are more limited in geographical scope.
There is no excuse for the Israeli states war crimes and apartheid behaviour. I suppose Netenyahu and Putin might be cut from same cloth.
He's certainly a very good front-runner for Biggest Shit of the 21st Century.
Then again, he started early. Almost from day 1.*
* Plz no pedantry about when C21 started.
He's a child of his time. A Leningrad siege baby. The fault is the Russian Government. All power corrupts and he was there too long. You need to change leader every so often to keep it fresh.
...and he even had a successor to carry on the hairy/bald tradition.
A Leningrad siege baby
He was born in 1952. His mother lived through the siege, his brothers did not.
Yes I know. But his two parents did survive and mother's milk being what it is...
Anybody who came out of that siege probably had some experience. They were unusual in that most couples didn't survive intact. They did. Some of that might have washed off on Putin. Every body in St Petersburg after the war lived in communal flats. The parents did their best by the boy. But that means working and leaving him alone to tough it out. It's just backdrop. But know your enemy.
The cradle thing (upthread) was also a feature of Serbian nationalist rhetoric re Kosovo.
Kosovo Field. "The place we're we got our asses kicked by the Ottomans."
I suppose the feeling was the blood sacrifice made it appealing to Milosevic's blood and soil concept of Serbia.