For by going to St. Petersburg, President Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Jacques Chirac, and the leaders of Italy, Germany, Canada and Japan will in effect place their stamp of approval on the removal of political rights, the harassment of independent groups, the renationalization of energy and the censorship of media that Putin has imposed on his country since he took over from Yeltsin six years ago. They will also give their blessing to Putin’s use of gas pipelines to threaten Ukraine, and to his ambiguous role in Iranian nuclear and Middle East peace negotiations.

Anne Applebaum “Skip St Petersburg, Mr Bush” Washington Post, 8 Mar 2006 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701332.html

The Western enthusiasm for Mr Putin is difficult to understand. As befits a spy, his track record is almost invisible. He worked briefly for one of the country’s best-known reformers, Anatoly Sobchak. But his successful career in the FSB (as the KGB is now known) suggests that liberalism is not always his prime concern.

Only on one issue can we see just where Mr Putin stands. Very depressing it is, too. His conduct of the war in Chechnya – where civilians are as flies to wanton boys, killed for the Kremlin leaders’ sport – has been a cynical disgrace. There is mounting evidence, too, that the lethal bombings that provided popular support for the assault on Chechnya may have been the work of agents provocateurs.

The Independent, editorial, “Mr Putin Does Not Deserve Praise Unless He is a Catalyst for Change”, 28 march 2000, http://www.russialist.org/archives/4204.html

We’re still hoping to get that glimpse of Mr. Putin’s soul that President Bush talked about last month — the one that convinced him that the Russian president “is a straightforward, honest man” and “a remarkable leader” whom his administration can trust. In the absence of such insight, we must rely on Mr. Putin’s public acts — which continue to be those of a budding autocrat who is systematically liquidating his country’s free press, responding to restless minorities with lies and dirty war and seeking to restore Russian influence in the world by supporting and encouraging such enemies of the United States as Iraq.

Washington Post Editorial, 5 July 2001 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2001/07/05/glimpses-of-mr-putins-soul/ae14ed02-db77-478b-ac26-a600d7253991/

Putin, after all, is noted for being one of the coldest, most ruthless of Soviet-era intelligence agents, and he has put the security apparatus in charge of Russia.

Georgie Anne Geyer, Universal Press Syndicate, “Trip reveals standards for NATO, Europe”, 22 June 2001, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-06-22/news/0106220080_1_president-putin-nato-expansion-russia

Putinism is no more than the impoverished philosophy of absolute power shared by the security services and the oligarchs close to them. It is yet another road to nowhere followed by Russia across the endless snow-swept plains of its history.

Andrei Piontkovsky, “So much for the year of RF President Putin”, Globe and Mail, 28 Dec 2000. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/so-much-for-the-year-of-putin/article771694/

The Putin regime is beginning to resemble that of Leonid Brezhnev, who never stirred the waters and always maintained the status quo – while sending troops into Afghanistan in a show of might that turned out to be illusory. The Putin administration may be remembered in a similar way – for having maintained the status quo at a very high price, including a bloody war in Chechnya.

The Russia Journal, “An empty address” 18 May 2003 http://russiajournal.com/node/15335