Ukraine’s former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko shared this view, having negotiated with Putin one-on-one. She described him to me as “absolutely rational, cold, cruel, black evil.” “He acts according to his own dark logic. He’s driven by this idea of historic mission and wants to create an empire. It comes from a deep inner belief,” she said. His objective was to “depersonify” Ukraine, strip it of its identity, she added.
