Joseph Hamilton’s Reviews > Putin > Status Update

“When it came to the [1939] Molotov-Ribbentrop pact ... Putin tried to satisfy both sides. On the one hand, it had been a 'personal decision of Stalin’, not in the interests of the Soviet people, he declared. On the other, it had been necessary as a response to the [1938] Munich agreement, hoping to sit out the war while Germany and [Russia] destroyed each other.

More detail would have been useful here.