If Vladimir Putin made one mistake as President of Russia – and you probably believe he made a great many more – it was to describe the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century".
I can offer all sorts of special pleading. He was tailoring his words to his audience: the conservative-minded Russian Parliament. He was mistranslated (which he was); the original Russian means not "the greatest" catastrophe , but "a very great" or "one of the greatest", which you may feel is splitting hairs, but actually makes a difference. And Putin is no longer Russia's President, he is prime minister, which isn't the same thing – though, again, you may beg to differ.
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