Putin sounds more and more like a stock Soviet apparatchik or nomenklatura member from the bad old days, justifying his pathetic existence from atop a mountain of corpses.
Joseph Brodsky nails the type in one of his essays from the collection “On Grief and Reason”, describing an East Bloc literary function and the creatures in attendance with their moral equivalency, trumped up phony outrage at western “crimes” and “demands” for this or that in furtherence of Soviet policy goals.
Brodsky made perceptive if unflattering observations about western fellow travelers and agents of influence attending such events, revealing them as self hating professional malcontents and witting dupes, ie., softheads and traitors.