Citation Needed - Vladimir Putin

Episode Date: July 6, 2022

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (/ˈpuːtɪn/; Russian: Владимир Владимирович Путин; [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ ˈputʲɪn] (listen); born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is the president of Russia, a position he has filled since 2012, and previously from 2000 until 2008.[7][c] He was also the prime minister from 1999 to 2000, and again from 2008 to 2012. He is also a diabolical monster bent on world domination.

Yeah, can I get an order for delivery? Yeah, I'll have a three pork belly ramen, three duck fried rice, two orders of steamed dumplings, and can I get, okay, give me a hot pocket. Just pretend a dumpling is a hot pocket, man. No, cause no, cause it's all gooey. How about an order egg rolls then? Would do they have him with pepperoni?

Oh my God, you're impossible. I now declare myself King of the podcast. Okay. Yeah. Great. Uh, you're King of the podcast. Congratulations. You're on opposed. Thank you.

On opposed to King. Hey, guys, what's going on? Oh, hey, no. So with Eli gone this week, I figured this would be a perfect time to consolidate my power. Wait, who? Eli, the other guy on the podcast doesn't ring any bells. And, and with this week's episode on Vladimir Putin, I figured this would be a great thing for pre-show shenanigans. He says, he says the beard. He's the guy with the beard. Tom, you're talking about Tom. No, no, no, no, he's the guy with the beard that's not you or Tom. He says the one

that does the funny voices. Funny. I'm drawn a blank here. So I have declared myself king of the podcast. And from now on, nobody can make Heath as drunk jokes or banging my mom jokes or I'm so lonely and depressed jokes. That's all out. Okay. Great, man. Hang in the podcast. No one cares. This is the lowest stakes title in the history of everything. And we are also still making those jokes. Those jokes aren't stopping. He's chubby. Jewish guys, he always opens his mouth in the photos. He's chubby. Jewish guy, he always opens his mouth in the photos. Oh, he's part of the podcast. I mean, okay, kinda.

Huh, I thought you just used our bathroom, man. Without buying anything. That's another rule, he can't use the bathroom. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, a podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Heath and I'll be hosting this thing that we do that's probably best described as counterintelligence if I'm being honest. In the spy world, I'm known as from Prussia with love handles and I'm joined from I trust

the operatives. First up, we have two heavily bearded spies known as Mata Harry and Poohen raker, Tom and Cecil. Okay, I'm aware that's a reference to something. I don't know what that is a reference to. Hello, this is Tom. Pop culture. At first, I thought it read Poohen raker and I was like, hell yeah. This is Tom pop culture.

And first I thought it read who break her and I was like, hell yeah. And then I realized I'm just a genital comb. Yeah. It was the second thing. Be proud. And we also have a guy who just needs a few more cats or like eight more of a China's and he'll be octopus. He knows it is here. Yeah, it's okay, Ben.

Should be your emotional ones at my house hate getting wet too. So tell us Noah what person place thing concept phenomenon or event. Are we going to be talking about today? Today we're going to be talking about Vladimir Putin. Oh, right. And you read a Wikipedia article and probably a biography, right? It's a two two two biographies. Two biographies. You say it is. So are you ready to tell us about real life, crotch lasers or whatever you did?

Boy, am I ever. All right. So who is Vladimir Putin? Okay. So even after reading two biographies of the guy, that's hard to say. I mean, we're talking about a guy from a pretty unremarkable family that grew up in a secretive repressive state, then spent 16 years working for the world's most secretive organization, only to watch his federal government and all their records kind of collapse around him and then have to start to know.

So it's from Indiana? It's like Indiana. And the point is that very few reliable records exist for the average Russian that was born in the 50s. And his particular biography has been thoroughly scrubbed twice. So once when he went to work for the KGB and again, when he was handed the nation's presidency on a silver platter, the point is pretty much everything I say about his early life has to come with a big asterisk.

Yeah. An asterisk. Yeah. An asterisk covered in polonium. He is. You know, I know Eli isn't with us today, but I feel like he'd appreciate an essay that may or may not be at all true. I just want to just feel like he does like the asterisk spirit. The spirit of asterisk. Every time a dubious claim is made, Eli gets his wings or mango nectar. Whatever. Take a shot Eli. Alright, so Vladimir of Vladimir of itch Putin or Vladiputes

was born in Lenin grad on October 7th, 1952, to Vladimir spirit and Maria Ivan over Putin. Didn't, didn't George W. Call him putty boots. It wasn't. I wouldn't be at all surprised. I think it's cool. I love that history will look back at a genocidal monster and it'll have cutesy poo nicknames. Like that's it. Right. Already we have an asterisk here on his parents' names, right? a genocidal monster and it'll have cutesy poo nicknames. Like that's a great way.

Already we have an astroscare on his parents' names, right? There is a persistent rumor that Vladiputes is actually adopted and his real birth parents are unknown. But since there's such a stigma against adoption in Russia, that's the exact kind of information that would be repressed by Putin's government. His father was severely injured in World War II, or as they call it in Russia, the great patriotic war, and worked for an auto plant after the war. His mom was a factory worker, and his grand father's paternal grandfather, Spirit and Putin,

was a personal cook for both Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. By the time that little Vlad-E was born, the siege of Lenin Greta had been over for almost a decade, but it still factored heavily into his early childhood. The siege of Leningrad was in nearly three year of fair during the Second World War that killed off over 600,000 civilians, including Vlad's older brothers, and left the city devastated for decades to come. Until at least the 80s and probably even today, Leningrad led way behind other major cities in the Soviet Union in terms of social services and infrastructure.

Even the fact that, uh, bloody had two parents who both survived the siege set him apart from most of his peers. Yeah. People tend to be a little cautious, the folks who have, like a favorite preparation of their dead neighbor. Yeah. Uh, a cannibal in a, that's a fun wordplay. You may know that you guys are, that's a fun wordplay. You made me.

You guys are still creepy despite that. That's great wordplay. Takes the edge of a little blanket. And I like to say, we don't actually know much about Vlad. He's early life. But one thing we can safely say is that he got beat up a lot as a kid. And we know this because he did martial arts as a grown up. That's the, that's the, that's the, that's the, that's the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the officially he's he's five foot seven, but again, asterisk, he's probably at least a couple inches shorter than that. So like, even when he exaggerates, he only gets to Tom Cruise's height, right? The point is he wouldn't put a ripe target for bullies in a very hard-ass city. Five, seven, and exaggerating about inches. I didn't expect to feel so close to Putin right now. No, from his early childhood, little Vladie dreamed to be in a spy.

He attributes his career to a popular movie called The Shield in the Sword, which I've heard described as the Soviet James Bond. I was a series of movies released in four parts, kind of necessary when your movie is 325 minutes long. Jesus. What? Right. But apparently it made enough of an impression on young

Vladie that he can still sing the theme song from memory to this day. Nice. Same for me with save by the bell actually. No, I did go on to be a high school student. So there you go. Well, there you go. Yeah. Now, apparently he was so enamored of his career choice. That at one point, he went to the KGB office in London grad to volunteer when he was a teenager and they're like, this is the fucking Soviet Union. You don't volunteer. We do, we will give you a job. And, and, but according to the Astros Gladen legend, the officer that he talked to was so impressed that he gave young Vladimir some advice on what educational path to take if he wanted to get a job as a spy.

Basically learn a second language, preferably English or German, and secondly, pursue an education in law enforcement. He's walking away all dejected and the KGB guys like, hey kid, and he throws him a phone tapping kit. Yeah. Oh man, you dropped it really badly. That was right. I'm going to hand you this bag of Polonium. That was the second thing I was doing. Don't drop this. So if all of the KGB dudes have bison in 1975, Putin is giving a job at the KGB, but it turns out to be way less glamorous

than the shield and the sword made it out to be. While there are rumors that he did some undercover work in like New Zealand or something at some point in his career, those rumors are not credible. Okay, it's bullshit propaganda that he spreads because the truth of the matter is that he was always mucking out stalls in the KGB. So you know how to get a bond movie? There'll come a time when like he's gone rogue or something and M will turn to somebody and say find out everywhere that bond has been in the last 24 hours. Well, Vlad, he was the KGB equivalent of the guy that M was talking to in that instance, right? Yeah, and get me a coffee to cream one sugar and one of those beat flavor doughnuts.

Bloods in the park next to the coffee stand getting the coffee donuts coffee guys. Instead of the bench face in the other way, it's like, right. Can you just like walk up in order the coffee donuts regularly? No, you said you're a spy. This is nothing. No, at first, the KGB kept them in Lenin, Greden, tasked him with following around whatever few foreign nationals visited the Soviet Union back then. Eventually he moved up the ranks to where he was stationed in East Germany, but not like

the cool kid table in East Berlin. He was in Dresden and his job was still followed around foreign nationals and writing down when and where they peed. All 900 hours subject is admiring communist architecture. Oh 906 hours subject is back in the hotel asleep. Yeah. Yeah. No, so cubes. You went all cubes. Interesting. So by this point in his career, Putin had married. He actually didn't get married until the ripe old age of 31, which was damn dear on her dove in the rush of the time. He doesn't appear to have had any real serious relationships with him and up to that point either. And when you're between the lines of his biography, it's pretty clear that that's because he was

insanely awkward with women. Hell, the way his wife, Ludmilla, tells the story, even in the official Kremlin approved biographies, he did such a bad job of proposing to her that she thought he was breaking up with her even after she had technically said yes. Yeah, he says, he says, well, it's decided then. And she gets up like she's going to grab her coat and her fucking toothbrush or whatever. But before she can, he finishes the sentence with, we'll get married in June. Yeah. But if you think that's bad, his original pickup line was, hey, babe, want to ride

the balloonium, balloonium? Huh? What is that? This is the problem with dating is spy. Everything's a double cross, right? You know, you think he's going in for the breakup, bam, no, you're tricked. Now you're married to a genocidal monster who will be reviled by all of your. I feel like that's useful though if you're the spotlight.

You get caught in a line. It's like, no, no, no, this is a triple cross. I was saying you got to try to keep up. I'm on an odd number of crosses. I can't return all the text. I have to have a secure line. It's a whole thing. So, no shit took a decidedly southward turn

for the Putin's in November of 1989 when the Berlin wall came down. Uh, suddenly Vlad East job went from, you know, right and down when people pee to burning as many pieces of paper as he could fit into the furnace at a time from like that day until he was recalled to Lenin, grad the following year. Now, at that point, he officially resigned from active KGB service and became a member of the active reserve. Unefficiently, who the fuck knows what his relationship to the KGB is from this point on in the story, but the cover story, and I guess possibly even the truth, is that he went to, he went back to school for an advanced degree at the St. Petersburg mining university.

Their motto is, you'll dig your new career. I think outside the box. No, there has been some speculation. It's not the great degree. He really felt shaftafed in. Mindshaft. There has been some speculation that Putin paid somebody else to write his dissertation. And while he vehemently denies it, that's severely undercut by the fact that it's filled with all kinds of high level math that nothing in his educational background suggests he would know.

And the fact that incredible witness came forward and said, yeah, no, my dad wrote it for him. But regardless of the ferocity of the accusation, at least 16 pages were directly lifted from an American textbook. So it's really, it's a question of whether Putin plagiarized it himself or paid someone else to plagiarize it. Okay. It's not that I admire outsourcing your plagiarism, but this joke was actually written by a 14 year old girl in the Philippines. Well, sometimes you got to get to work. Oh, God, this part of the dissertation is Michelle Obama's college essay. That doesn't even make sense.

She's not famous yet. Halfway through it switches to English. That seems like a given. Why does it keep saying, see figured there are no figures. I don't know. Anyway, so while he's completing his thesis, quote, unquote, asterisk, the Soviet Unionist is crumbling all around him. Now, I should admit right here, I find this to be possibly the most interesting period in the modern history of any country. So I've got to be really careful not to get

into the weeds here. But suffice to say that after the reunification of Germany, the clock was ticking on the USSR, right? And then chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev tried a bunch of like speed reforms to stave off the inevitable, but in December of 1991 he officially stepped down to make room for the nation's first ever elected leader, Boris Yelts. In political terms, it's like being tired of walking on the stairs so you throw yourself down an open elevator shaft. To severely understand the case, I'm just going to say that the Soviet Union failed to smoothly

transition to an open free market economy. The 90s were a chaotic decade for Russians that were marked by constant wars, rampant corruption, constant shortages, political turbulence, and skyrocketing inflation. Hell, it is eight years in office. Yeltsin went through eight different prime ministers. And as Yeltsin, near the end of his constitutional term limit of eight years, he was getting so unpopular that there was a very real chance that a successor would try to win favor by throwing his ass in jail as soon as he stepped down. But the

system they had in place gave him so much power that he could damn near hand pick his successor. Russian Rudy Giuliani standing in front of the four seasons total Borscht House. This is totally legitimate. We have stacks of alpha. David's. No, you can't see them. What's no real American Giuliani off the side just dropping an arm full of apples trying to fold a mat. Which way is Ukraine?

No, no. No, a Yelsen was looking for a few important qualifications for the handpick successor. First and foremost, I had to be somebody who definitely wouldn't throw his ass in jail. Secondly, he wanted somebody who wouldn't reverse the free market reforms that he'd been championing. But third and perhaps just as importantly, he needed somebody bald. Now, so okay, this might be the weirdest thing that I know, but the Russian head of state has been trading back and forth between a hairy guy and a bald guy since Zarnickles the first in 1825. What?

Almost 200 fucking years. This whole truth, even if you count all four leaders in 1917 and the puppet president that Putin stuffed in between his terms and office. Oh, okay. I'd like to take a moment and recognize the greatest observation ever in a citation. What? So let's take a moment, silence for that.

Wow. Wow. Look up, look up Harry Bald. There's a whole Wikipedia article on it. It's fucking incredible. It's a male pattern baldness pattern. Like that. Yeah, right. There's a whole Wikipedia article and it's fucking incredible. It's a male pattern baldness pattern. Now, but luckily, Yelsen happened to know a bald guy who didn't want to arrest him and made way too much money on the raping and pillaging of Russia's natural resources to want to roll back

into Yelsen's reforms and return to a communist system. And that was a political neo-fight that had never held elected office and nobody outside of a tight circle had ever even fucking heard of. And that guy was, of course, Vladimir Putin. All right. It looks like the next president of Russia can be Cecil and then me. So, yeah, I think we're both perfect. I mean, it could be Tom and then Eli though, so it could be worse. Hey, all right. Before any of that happens, we'll find out what happens next with President Vladibuts after a quick break for some op-impote of nothing.

Comrades, hello, welcome to our totally free and fair election center. Very exciting. Thank you. Great to be here. Okay, now let's get down to business of fairness. Boris, who would be good loser for this? Someone believable as loser. Give me names, go.

I'm not sure this is how election goes. Boris? Boris, I'm kind of confused now. You want to see your wife again? Did you get box of ears, I sent? Yes, yes, got the box of ears. Okay, good, good, good. Now listen up. Ha, ha, see what I did there. Listen, listen, because the ear thing, I said, Oh, no, just good. It's funny, right, guys? The Here is a call back. Okay, I've been you go next. Uh, who would be your choice to lose election? Well, I thought we could frame those pussy riot girls some more.

Okay, what's with you and pussy riot girls? That's your answer for everything. What about pussy riot girls? Everything we say, do you, do you want where underpants of shame? No, not again. Didn't think so. Okay, last chance to meet me. I need you to pick loser.

Someone no one will miss. No one will, how about you? But me? No, no, I said loser. That's not me, obviously not me. I wrote polar bear to work this morning. I'm not loser, that's done. You're done.

You're stupid. Okay, now everybody tell me I'm the best or I wear your children's skin at press conference. You are the best. You are the best, the best. Ah, that's right. I am. King of podcasts.

[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ And we're back. When we left off, Russia was draining the swamp and getting a political outsider. I got to go. They were there. Okay. So the way Putin comes to power is actually a pretty interesting story. So okay, Yelsen kit exactly a point of success or any, doesn't have enough popular

support to do the job with an endorsement, but he can install any prime minister he wants at any point, and they don't have a like a VP in their system. So if the president should say resign unexpectedly, the PM takes over as president. Now, that triggers an election, but it does give the handpicked PM the advantage of in competency and if said PM knows that it's coming, it also gives them a head start on preparing their campaign against any would be competitors. Yes. Resign unexpectedly. Fun fact, this event would come to be known as the great Russian winky face election. Yeah, sure.

Well, he's got his election visor coming over. I'm like, Hey, Vlad, I got a bunch of great op-o research turned out they're all dead. Like the whole like very recently, all your opposition died. So, all right. So first step in Yeltsas plan is to make Vladimir Putin popular. So he installs this relatively unknown bureaucrat from Leningrad, which at that point had been unrenamed back to St. Petersburg as his prime minister. Then he has put in control over the ongoing conflict in Chechnya.

This was an on-again, off-again, quagmire that had been stalemated since 1994. But when Putin took over, he devoted an insane amount of extra forces to it. Like the force that he sent into Cheshna in 1999 was the same size as the force the Soviet Union used to invade Afghanistan 20 years earlier. Afghanistan, about the size of Texas, Cheshna, about the size of New Jersey for what is it good for? Cult of Dayton, Putin say it again. Yeah. War.

Good God. I want more James Brown Cecil. I think we need more of that in our lives. I've been saying that for years. Now, unpopular war or no, the Russian people were still happy to see somebody like at least taking the conflict seriously. With that many reinforcements, it seems like there was an end in sight for this war for the first time in forever. And that gave Putin a ton of political capital. Of course, his search ultimately wouldn't work,

and it would just be an even larger force that was bogged down then in an unwinnable war. But that wouldn't be clear for several more months. And by then, Yelson would have already, like, surprised, retired and gotten put and elected to office. Okay. Just to summarize the strategy here, the war was going so badly that a guy became popular not because he won the war, but because he lost it more differently. Yes.

That was the bar. Yeah, we got a backward ass country votes for leaders. You spend a bunch of money on a war they can't win. Stupid Russian dumb country. No, I also have to point this part out, even though it's a bit of a diversion, in the week's leading up to the election, there was a series of devastating apartment building bombings that were attributed to Chetchney and terrorists. After the first couple of bombings, though, a couple of terrorists were caught in the act and the bomb was diffused before it could go off. The perpetrators got away, but the cops had detailed descriptions

from eyewitnesses, so they put out a dragnet to find them. And then like a day later, the FSB, which is what the KGB was rebranded as comes out and says that the apartment building bombing that one was actually a fake apartment building bombing that they were doing to like, they were going to pretend to carry out the test and see how vigilant the local residents were being. What? Yeah. No, for real. They used the we were just testing you excuse. Yeah, no, for realsie, they usually we weren't just testing you excuse. So long story short, the KGB killed a fuck ton of Russian citizens in apartment building bombings to terrify people about Chechen's right before the former KGB officer known for

being tough on Chechnya needed to be elected president. What these screenshots? I was just testing your sister to see if she was loyal to you, to you. You should be thanking me for this. The pen tuple cross, Katja, you got to try. I'm on a different level than you get on my level. There's five. Now at this point, look, the Western world still doesn't know what to make of Russia in

general. You know, they've had a sort of like two steps forward, one step back relationship with democracy and civil rights. But the basic consensus was that they were heading in the right direction and that Yeltsin was an honest broker who genuinely wanted democratic reform. And nobody outside of Russia knew Jack shit about this Putin guy beyond the hagiographical bullshit that made it its way into his official biography before the election. So at first the international community greeted his election with cautious optimism, cautious optimism. The name of my joy division, cover van. Trust. So terrified. First.

Fuck yeah. So in May of the year 2000, Putin was officially inaugurated into his first full term as president after a little more than four months on the job. And four things really worked in his favor towards becoming one of the most popular leaders and Russian history. Okay. The first is how bad the last eight years had been. So basically anybody coming after Yeltsin had a head start on looking good. The second is paradoxically, all the groundwork that Yeltsin had done.

Right. No leader would have been good enough to transition away from the Soviet Union's command economy without a period of upheaval in chaos for the average Russian. But Yeltsin actually did a fairly good job. The third was 9-11. Right. So until then, the international community had bristled at the brutality of Russia's campaign against Chechnya, but since the Chechens were technically Muslim terrorists, Russia and NATO kind of found themselves on the same side here and the fourth. And I just, I can't overstate this one, is that George Bush's, George W. Bush's foreign policy was so goddamn terrifying that the rest of the world was like, you know what I miss is a really strong and nuclear armed Russia to damp an American

in Russia. Jesus. Where's the fucking sticker with Bush's face that says, I did that. Like where's that one? It's fucked up. We ended on the same team there after 9-11. Like someone who's like, you know how in the movies, the whole world unites to fight against aliens.

So yeah, there's a tiny group of muslim people. I want to take all their stuff. Yeah. Can we all get on the beach? And we could. Most of us. Yeah. So, okay. So that all being said, putting in a couple of domestic failures that really did ding his popularity back home. The first was an underwhelming response, underwhelming and notoriously callous response to a submarine disaster that killed 118 Russian sailors. The second was the, yeah, that was pretty much it. You know, what, it, it, it, it, what it, what it, what it, yeah, I like sailors who don't drown. So the second thing came from the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002. So Cheshire and terrorists had taken over the theater with a long-listed demands, but

rather than negotiate, Russian police just gasped the whole place with the idea that they would knock everybody unconscious, the hostages and the terrorists, and then they just strolling and shoot all the terrorists while they were asleep. It's just like the worst. No, yeah, no, they could not have. No, they literally just shot him in the head while they were asleep. It's just quite a word. No, yeah, no, they could not have. No, they literally just shot him in the head where they sat. But the big problem was 130 of the hostages died from being gased on conscience. From the point of gas, probably yes.

Yes. Okay, we tried negotiating now at this time for Zeichlahn Plan B. But they exactly like that except they didn't try negotiating. Yeah. Oh, it's so fucking awful. Cause like that, they didn't like warn the hospitals of what they were doing. So the doctors didn't even know what they'd been gassed with. It was so fucking stupid. Now despite his missteps, though, Putin figured out pretty quickly how to keep his approval rating high. See, his predecessor was played by a steady stream of bad news about corruption, scandals, and in aptitude.

And since getting rid of corruption, scandals in an aptitude would be a whole big thing. Putin decided to get rid of news instead. Right. So the people, yeah, right. So Putin had the head of the largest independent news agency in the country arrested on some bullshit charges and then seized his property for phantom tax evasion sold them cheaply to friendly oligarchs. After that, the owners of the other independent news agencies basically just got the message and coverage became very potent friendly.

Of course, controlling the owners of news agencies doesn't necessarily equate to owning the reporters themselves, but when they strayed too far from the official line, he just had him killed. Now, of course, there's always like a millimeter or two of plausible deniability here, but the first high profile anti-putin reporter to be assassinated and anapolice Kaskaya, she was killed on Putin's birthday. Another of his harshest critics was killed in literal view of the fucking Kremlin. Huh.

Just move him at the end if you do that. That's no, but they don't want the, right? They just want one millimeter of deniability and that's it. They want everybody to know Putin did it, right? Now according to the committee to protect journalists, since Putin's rise to power, Russia had become the third most dangerous country in the world to be a reporter. And now, given my, that includes like active war zones and shit. Yeah, it's right underneath American high school newspapers.

Oh, fuck. But yeah. But yeah. So in 2004, Putin won a part of an election in a landslide, taking 71.9% of the vote to his nearest competitors, 13.8%. Of course, the Kremlin had to literally approve the candidates. So Putin literally got to decide who he was going to run against. On top of that, European election observers noted abuses of government resources, biases state control, media, and instances of ballot stuffing. And welcome to the debate stage, comrade opponent. Now comrade opponent before we begin, do you have any opening remarks?

You're blinking very quickly. Stop that. Yeah. Okay. So we didn't got to choose the losing candidates, but then some advisor was like, Hey, Vlad, prop comic chewing with mouth open started getting a bunch of votes somehow. I don't know what happened. We have to cheat some more. We have to sell it.

Also have to. Yeah, you don't lose to prop comic chewing with mouth open. Well, yeah, I voted for com red opponent. Well, and to Tom's point, I should probably say like that's accurate, except that Putin refused to debate anyone. Now, so technically the Russian constitution limited him to two terms. And there was plenty of speculation that he was going to have that provision amended before 2008, but he had a different plan in mind. Ultimately, he handpicked his successor, like Yelson did, but then had that successor, Demetri Medvedev, appoint him prime minister, while seating a fuck ton of power to the prime minister.

And then he spent four years undercutting and embarrassing medvedev only to run again in 2012, because you just can't have to go more than two consecutive terms. And he did that by the way, after forcing through a constitutional amendment that extended the presidential term to six years, starting with the next president after medvedev. Okay, now we don't want this to seem like an autocratic power grab. So let's make sure our corruption paperwork is in order. Yeah. Yeah. Now by the time he's elected to his third presidential term, this motherfucker has gone full queen of hearts from Alice and Wonderland. Okay. He's he's he's he's all these bullshit media stunts where he'll

like ride in the back of a fighter jet But then distribute video of him stepping out of the front seat as though he piloted it In one instance, I love this so much. He dove down into some like old Greek ruin under water With cameras rolling and damn if he didn't come up with not one but two priceless faces All right, I'm gonna go. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a Ming dynasty. What is that not a thing in Greece? Is that not what you've been rescues a mermaid somehow? Yes.

What's happening? Oh, I'll do it. If you want a good left, look up video of the exhibition hockey matches that he plays against retired Russian All Stars. I don't want just like videos you have to watch. I'm just like tripping ball. It could be your point so that he can score like, like, like, so he can score seven goals in a single

game against the best hockey players in the history of the world. It's like Bugs Bunny striking out three guys with one pitch by talking to all these. All that's amazing. So the high point of this trend, of course, is the famous shirtless equestrian pick that he had hanging up in the Olympic hotels during the winter games in the in Sochi in 2014. Yeah. And he was also voted Michigan man of the year. Crazy. Crazy.

Yeah. Okay. I actually, this is real. I wanted so bad to recreate that photo on the horse, but with me on the horse and use it as a Tinder profile. I actually went as far as calling horse rental guys, but then I saw you need four more pictures. You need five pictures. I gave up. Yeah, I'm a picture of themselves. That's a whole fucking thing.

She got one for each side and one from above. Of you on the horse. It's four pictures of a horse and then one picture with heathen. It's taken so many dick picks of the horse. Don't worry about that. And okay, so look, Putin is a terrifying genocidal power mad lunatic bent on world domination. Right.

He's straight up bond villain as any living human being. And there's a real good chance that my emphasis on the silly aspects of his rise to power will seem really out of touch in a couple of months or a couple of years after he launches nukes at somebody or something. But it's important to remember that no matter how powerful and terrifying Putin gets at his core, he's a sad little fucker who has to spread false rumors about all the hot chicks he's banging despite almost certainly being the wealthiest man in the world. He still has a Canadian girlfriend. No matter how.

No matter how. Sometimes. And more importantly, no matter how interesting his story gets, there is still an impossibly bland and boring man at its center. All right. If you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? There is still an impossibly bland boring man at its center.

I just, I'm sorry. I pulled the trigger on that too early, didn't I? All right. Are you ready for the quiz? That I am. All right. No, Putin seems determined to return Russia to the quiz? That I am. All right, no, Putin seems determined to return Russia

to the former glory of the USSR. What former glory? Great question. Hey, basic food shortages. B, the purges. C, Soviet asceticism and communal apartments. D share noble. E a bizarre mix of high technology incredibly narrowly focused to achieve a singular political goal sandwich in a context and culture of repressive economic and social deprivation. Secret answer, secret answer. All of you. I know. You say we're the best.

Okay. No other than cannibal and a's obviously what's the following was Hutton's father's favorite food to make when he was cooking for Lenin and Stalin apparently. Oh, all right. Hey, red pudding. Red. I had to start with red pudding. I think it's a list of bad ponds. You start with B Bolshevik. She swas Bolsheug. Yeah. Sure.

Money, man. So. Oh, well, D is obviously the one that like is that's the best one, but I don't even want to say that with my mouth. So I'm going to go with the Gabagulug. That's, it's never the whole lot of more pun. It was never correct. Gabagulug.

Something you learn early, something you learn early. All right. Now, one time Tom and I watched Vlad sing blueberry hill on stage like bad karaoke. Yes. Tom thought he should have done. He really does. He gets in front of everybody and from his big cloud of people, just Google blueberry hill full of vibrates.

Just Google it and check it out. And he's doing it in front of like a bunch of celebrities too. I don't even know where it happened, but he's singing it really badly like Bad karaoke Tom, of course, thought he should have done Putin on the rids. What's the first? Did I think he should have sung a occupation of Georgia on my mind. Be down with the GOP. Yeah, you know me. See?

I only have eyes for you, crane or D. Crime or river. Yeah. That had to show up. Oh, these are all so fucking good. How do I pick just one? I'll go with C. I only have eyes for Ukraine. Uh, yes, sure.

Cause it's all right. I'll pick Eli. No, you got him all right. You're going to give the wind to Eli because of that? Sure. Why not? Okay. Eli wins. And he's not here.

I'm going to I actually win. So I get to choose on Eli's. Yeah. I go next and I'm gonna I actually win so I get to choose. I'm Eli's I go next and I am king of podcast This all makes sense No, and Cecil Eli's not here. I'm king of the podcast. I'm Heath, King of the podcast. I'm thanking you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. And by then, I will be an expert on something else.

Between now and then, you can hear Tom and Cecil on cognitive distance. And you can hear Eli knowing myself on God awful movies, skating atheist, skeptic rat, and D&D monos. And if you support Ukraine, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com She's a scary hot. Jesus!

That is unrelated to Ukraine, but you can do both of those things. You can absolutely do all those things. You can support Ukraine and us. It's priorities. And if you'd like to give it a touch with us, visit our past episodes, connect with some social media, or take a look at the show notes. Check out citationpod.com. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪