Putin’s Truth

New York Times: “Friday evening, continuing to take questions in a news conference after his spokesman tried to end it, President Vladimir Putin of Russia put forward a blunt thesis on the nature of truth.”

Said Putin: “You can’t trust anyone. You can only trust me.”

“It was a fitting coda to a week that saw Mr. Putin particularly busy in constructing his version of reality at a time when a Russian victory in Ukraine appears as distant as ever. In a marathon of public appearances that began on Monday with a televised drive across Russia’s damaged bridge to Crimea, Mr. Putin held forth on nuclear doctrine, prisoner swaps with the United States, supposed Polish revanchism and even the ‘very harsh’ practices of European zoos.”