Kickass News

Forbes Magazine recently announced their annual list of the most powerful people in the world, and for the third year in a row, they chose Russian President Vladimir Putin as #1. In explaining why Putin was picked as the most powerful person in the world for the 3rd year in a row, Forbes said “Russia's president continues to prove he's one of the few men in the world powerful enough to do what he wants --and get away with it.”   Putin has been described as cold, enigmatic, calculating, ruthless, and even megalomaniacal, but in this episode we go beyond the comic book villain idea of Vladimir Putin with my guest Steven Lee Myers. He’s been a reporter for the New York Times for 26 years, spending 7 of those years in Russia and part of that time as Moscow bureau chief during the period when Putin consolidated his power.   He’s recently written the most extensive biography to date on Valdimir Putin called “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.” Today we’ll talk about Putin’s early life in the KG