For a “simple” civil servant whose annual salary is only $140,000, Russia’s president owns a lot of lavish property and as many as a dozen luxury yachts – two more have just been found.
The upsurge in antisemitism comes amid the Russian government’s claims that it is fighting neo-Nazis in Ukraine. The unrest also seems to be at odds with Russia’s cult around the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazism in World War II.
Vladimir Putin is no longer the macho leader he once portrayed to be if Russian defector Gleb Karakulov is to be believed. The intelligence officer, who has travelled extensively with the president, said that Putin was ‘pathologically afraid for his life’. He never uses mobile phones or the internet