Officials get tome on Putin’s one-liners as gift

Some of Vladimir Putin’s saltiest one-liners have been turned into a book by his supporters who have sent a batch to the Kremlin touting it as the ideal holiday gift for patriotic Russian officials.

The tome, entitled The Words that are changing the World, is the latest expression of admiration from fans who cast the President as the saviour of modern Russia and will join an array of Putin-themed merchandise from perfume to vodka.

“We had begun to notice that everything which Putin says comes to pass to one degree or another,” Anton Volodin, author of the 400-page book, which was published by a pro-Kremlin group called Network, said in a statement.

“In this book we traced his words and confirmed that idea.”Among memorable quotes selected are Mr Putin’s threat to “rub out” Chechen militants in the “out house”, his contested assertion that Crimea was always and remains an “inseparable” part of Russia, and a bizarre brush-off of Latvia in which he told Riga it could only expect to receive “the ears of a dead donkey” from Moscow, a Russian expression for nothing.

Blunt, barrack-room language is part of Mr Putin’s stock in trade and helps him send signals to the state security elite which he, as a former intelligence agent, springs from.

Mr Putin, in a quote too new to be included in the book, used that trademark vernacular this month to suggest Turkey’s political leadership may have “decided to lick the Americans in a particular place” by shooting down a Russian warplane.

Other quotes that are included centre on Mr Putin’s patriotism.“For me Russia is my whole life,” reads one, while others disparage Western-style democracy and same sex marriage.

Nikolai Svanidze, a historian, said the new book reminded him of the Little Red Book and its quotes from Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong published in the 1960s.