Thread by @JMichaelWaller

1) It's helpful to understand Vladimir Putin as a person. Here's a profile of him that I wrote when he took power 22 years ago. There were gaps in his biography even then. He was never a "spymaster." academia.edu/49051829/Portr…

2) "The dearth of hard facts about Putin’s KGB career and the official silence, combined with the Andropov-style myth-making about Russia’s new leader ... indicate that something about Putin’s KGB past is hidden." He did not have a distinguished KGB career.

3) "Putin’s blank biography is being filled with fiction. 'Among the myths that are already building around Putin–some peddled purposefully by his staff–is that he was a career intelligence officer, a member of the KGB’s elite crew of superspies...'"

4) "'...well-educated, posted abroad, sophisticated in the ways of the outside world, particularly in Western business practices ... Those jobs almost exclusively went to the sons of the KGB and Communist Party elite, and that was a club to which Vladimir Putin never belonged.'”

5) "One must conclude that Putin has something to hide. This suggests that whatever he did in the KGB was ... something that would offend even the very public that backs his campaign of 'liquidation' and 'extermination,' in his words, of the population in Chechnya."

6) In St. Petersburg, "Putin earned the nickname 'Stasi' – not a name likely to be conferred on a foreign intelligence officer, but a fitting one for a political enforcer.

"...Putin tried to avoid answering questions about the KGB’s role in Soviet state terror and repression."

7) "... the only other activity in Putin’s past that could undermine his public appeal are claims that he had a hand in illicit 'economic operations.' ... he has been at the epicenter of such actions at every major post he has held since serving in East Germany."

8) As deputy to St Petersburg Mayor Sobchak, "Putin rose to handle the city’s foreign and hard-currency operations.... Putin was involved in a range of questionable deals, including the ;scandalous privatization of the Baltic Fleet and the Hotel Astoria in St. Petersburg..."

9) "... and with St. Petersburg organized crime figures. City council members accused Putin of 'mismanagement' of export licenses for local metals traders (in 1990, while he was still a KGB officer) and recommended that he be fired...."

10) MVD police documents alleged “'criminal activity – the exercise of official position for purposes of personal advancement – in regard to Putin' ... Putin’s post in the St. Petersburg city government 'significantly impedes'" anti-corruption investigations of Mayor Sobchak.

11) Putin "became an aide ... next to Yeltsin’s daughter ... in charge of the 'oversight department' to enforce loyalty among bureaucrats and regional governors across the Russian Federation. Putin was now a member of The Family – a loyal protector, not a corruption-fighter."

12) "Years of simmering scandals about corruption in the FSB, including allegations of contract killings, bombings and hostage-taking, boiled over on Putin’s watch in November 1998."

13) Putin ran FSB mafiya: "FSB officers called a Moscow news conference to claim fellow officers ... used the service 'to settle accounts with undesirable persons, to carry out private political and criminal orders for a fee, and sometimes simply as an instrument to earn money.'"

14) "While Putin did little if anything to combat corruption, he did everything possible to stand in the way of those who tried. He ordered Procurator General Yuri Skuratov, who was building corruption cases against members of The Family, to resign" after a public video scandal.

15) Putin led not like an intelligence proessional "but a political enforcer. As soon as he became prime minister, he unleashed a new way of thinking in Russia that finds it acceptable to use indiscriminate lethal force against entire peoples in order to achieve political goals."

16) The "Second Chechnya War 'was planned in advance' in order to promote [Putin's] domestic political goals" and propel him to the presidency.

(I didn't know in early 2000 the extent of Putin's involvement in the 1999 apartment bombings, but @DavidSatter laid it out in detail.)