Vladimir Putin, ideological machismo and obsession with power: how the metamorphosis of a leader who 20 years ago was a “friend of Europe” was born

“Russia is a friend of Europe, a stable peace on the continent is a fundamental objective for our nation. Just as respect for democratic rights and freedoms is the key objectives of our internal politics”. So he spoke Vladimir Putin at the German Parliament on 25 September 2001, using what he himself had magnified as “the language of Goethe, Schiller and Kant”, learned in the five years he spent in Dresden as head of the local KGB section, with the rank of lieutenant colonel.