Blatant Reality

With Putin positioning himself as the next prime minister of Russia, some are comparing him to Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

Coming out of the seven-decade coma that was the Soviet Union, Russia rejoins the world having substantially - and painfully - reinvented itself. Whatever economic statistics say, most Russians have adopted a middle-class mindset that places a premium on state-enabled stability and income growth. In this regard, it makes less sense to compare Putin to former Russian leaders and more sense to compare him to Singapore’s founding father and longtime leader, Lee Kuan Yew, who, after overtly ruling for many years, still covertly steers the country as “minister mentor” to his son the prime minister.