Is Putin playing Trump like he did Berlusconi?
Putin’s friendship with the Italian may simply demonstrate that the Russian leader has a natural chemistry with a rich, politically incorrect businessman.
.. “Putin is very strategic. He would focus on people’s vulnerabilities — whether their vanity or greed or financial needs.”
.. Putin, drawing from his background as an intelligence officer, had made a “calculated” overture to Trump early in the presidential campaign, “playing upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him,” and turning Trump into an “unwitting agent” of Russia.
Asked about Trump in December, Putin described the New Yorker as “bright and talented,” words that clearly pleased Trump: “It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond,” the mogul told reporters soon after... Berlusconi holidayed at Putin’s dacha on the Black Sea, while the Russian stayed at the Italian leader’s villa in Sardinia.
.. At various times Berlusconi defended Putin’s military incursion into the republic of Georgia, which the U.S. and much of Europe strongly denounced. He praised Putin’s leadership style.
.. “In reality, what he was doing was pushing Putin’s agenda with no real guarantee that Putin would ever compromise on our agenda,” says the U.S. official, who spoke to POLITICO. “I see a similar trend with Trump.”
.. the former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder joined the board of the Russian energy giant Gazprom, and in 2014 he attended a lavish 70th birthday party thrown for him by a Gazprom subsidiary in St. Petersburg