The purpose of this book is neither to demonise Putin – he is more than capable of doing that himself – nor to absolve him of his crimes, but to explore his personality, to understand what motivates him and how he has become the leader that he is.
—Philip Short, Putin: His Life and Times, (Great Britain: Vintage, 2023), 16.
Would a British biographer write a sentence like this about any Western head of state? Reminds me of telling an Estonian friend that in the British history of the Baltics I’d just finished the author was critical of Mannerheim seemingly because he was insufficiently willing for Finns to die for the British queen. My acquaintance smiled and asked me if I’d read histories of the Baltics written by people from the Baltics.