Putin’s Olympic Makeover

Soviet spy-turned Kremlin kleptocrat Vladimir Putin engaged in a classic piece of disinformation last week. He freed from Russia’s prison gulag a number of political prisoners including rock stars, environmentalists and a one-time rival, former billionaire Mikhail Khordokovsky.

The object was to clean up Putin’s image in the West before he hosts the Winter Olympic Games. But Khordokovsky made clear at a press conference fittingly held in Berlin at a museum memorializing Communist Cold War repression that there are many more in Russia still imprisoned on trumped up political charges.

And, even as Putin was doing a cynically timed public relations makeover, he celebrated the founding of the instrument of that Soviet repression, best known as the KGB. He’s proud of being a ruthless thug, and we forget that at our peril.