Rant: Prospects for more Russian film villains looking good
12 Dec 2004 by Paul Davies
James Bond films are always that little bit cooler when the villain is Russian. Anonymous terrorists just aren't nearly as engaging. Unfortunately, with the Cold War over, and Russia reduced to an oligarchic nation dominated by the nouveau riche, their claim to the mysterious character residing in a remote hideaway has diminished somewhat.Just as in British spy flicks, so in the real world. Skinny men hiding in caves with AK47s and long beards damning the Western infidels simply don't make as good an opposition as a huge country with a prominent totalitarian tradition protected by weather too cold for any sane person to enter its domain.
Thankfully for the world, and the future of Fleming-inspired cinema, Russia's President Vladimir Putin is putting the world to rights.
Don't be fooled by his Andrew Marr-esque appearance. Mr Putin is hardcore ex-KGB with genuine authoritarian leanings who is stepping up his anti-Western sentiment. Fantastic.
The latest movement in his tactical trip to totalitarian villainy was triggered by the furore over the recent rigged election in the Ukraine, where the Putin-supported Mr Yanukovich was made to look a little disreputable.
In a shamelessly ironic move, Mr Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, have accused the West of meddling in Ukraine in order to destabilise the region. Just for good measure, Mr Putin laid into Iraq's interim government and its planned elections too.
Trying to steal the Ukrainian presidency was one part of Mr Putin's plan to reverse the break-up of the Soviet Union. To this end, he has interfered in Georgia and Moldova and openly supported crazy Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, the self-proclaimed "cleanest president in the world."
Foreign policy is but one bottle of vodka in the autocrat's drinks cabinet.
Mr Putin has also waged war on economic liberalism and the oligarchs, most notably Mikhail Khodokovsky, the incarcerated mega-rich boss of oil company Yukos, about to be all but subsumed by the state-owned Gazprom.
Re-absorbing the old state pillars of industry has also helped the Kremlin sponsor a rise in the level of corruption that now eclipses the best efforts of Boris Yeltsin.
But perhaps the most conclusive evidence for the shadiness of Mr Putin's character comes from 2001, when Dubya famously looked into Mr Putin's eyes and got a feel for his soul—and found him straightforward and trustworthy.
No crazy dictator can get by on his own; he needs an army of indoctrinated minions. No problem. Press censorship, covering the outlawing of all independent TV and most of the independent press, has left Mr Putin with a stellar 70% approval rating. He's doing really rather well, despite not possessing a furry white cat. Give him time.
