Chap­ter 19. In Putin, I rec­og­nized the same sort of men who once dom­i­nat­ed Chicago’s polit­i­cal machine—smart and hard­work­ing indi­vid­u­als who believed that their suc­cess was the result of both resilience and a deep under­stand­ing of their sur­round­ings. These were men who had nav­i­gat­ed dif­fi­cult envi­ron­ments, mas­tered the art of nego­ti­a­tion, and learned how to manip­u­late cir­cum­stances in their favor. Their world­view was shaped by an unre­lent­ing prag­ma­tism, see­ing pol­i­tics as a con­tin­u­ous game of give-and-take, where loy­al­ty was often con­di­tion­al, and pow­er was a com­mod­i­ty to be acquired and main­tained at all costs. Their per­cep­tion of suc­cess was trans­ac­tion­al, cal­cu­lat­ed, and, above all, self-serv­ing. Chap­ter 19 delves deep­er into these par­al­lels, exam­in­ing the intri­cate dynam­ics of pow­er and influ­ence.

What set them apart was not just their abil­i­ty to maneu­ver through polit­i­cal land­scapes but also their keen insight into human behavior—an under­stand­ing sharp­ened by years of sur­vival in high-stakes envi­ron­ments. They could antic­i­pate moves before they hap­pened, lever­age weak­ness­es, and craft alliances that served their inter­ests, all while main­tain­ing the appear­ance of con­trol. Yet, despite their sharp intel­lect and strate­gic minds, there always seemed to be a void in them, a lack of con­vic­tion in any­thing beyond the accu­mu­la­tion of pow­er and influ­ence. They often sought val­i­da­tion through dom­i­nance, wealth, or con­trol, but there was an empti­ness that lin­gered beneath their achieve­ments. In rare moments of reflec­tion, I sus­pect­ed they rec­og­nized this with­in them­selves, but such thoughts were quick­ly buried beneath the con­stant pur­suit of more.

That was what I felt sit­ting across from Putin as he aired his griev­ances, express­ing his frus­tra­tion at not receiv­ing the lev­el of respect he believed he was owed. I found myself grow­ing impatient—not sim­ply because his con­cerns seemed exag­ger­at­ed or his world­view out­dat­ed, but because I saw in him an indi­vid­ual who had the poten­tial to ele­vate his coun­try beyond the lim­its of his per­son­al ambi­tions. Rus­sia, with its rich cul­tur­al his­to­ry, vast nat­ur­al resources, and intel­li­gent, hard­work­ing cit­i­zens, had the poten­tial to thrive under strong and vision­ary lead­er­ship. Yet, instead of using his author­i­ty to build a future of pros­per­i­ty, he remained pre­oc­cu­pied with griev­ances and rival­ries, choos­ing con­trol over progress. There was a pro­found sense of lost oppor­tu­ni­ty, a reminder of how eas­i­ly pow­er can be squan­dered when lead­ers remain trapped with­in the con­fines of their own inse­cu­ri­ties.

I could­n’t help but won­der how often his­to­ry had been shaped not by the bril­liance of lead­ers but by the lim­i­ta­tions of their per­spec­tives. What if they could see beyond their imme­di­ate ambi­tions and tru­ly com­mit to the well-being of their peo­ple? How dif­fer­ent could nations be if those in pow­er pri­or­i­tized growth, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and shared pros­per­i­ty over the con­stant fear of los­ing con­trol? These ques­tions lin­gered in my mind as I observed him, know­ing that they applied not only to Rus­sia but to so many gov­ern­ments across the world. The inabil­i­ty to imag­ine a dif­fer­ent way forward—the reluc­tance to embrace change—was often the biggest obsta­cle to progress.

The good news, how­ev­er, was that through­out my trav­els, I always encoun­tered indi­vid­u­als who chal­lenged this kind of nar­row think­ing. The young men and women in the room before me, the activists and orga­niz­ers who had gath­ered to hear me speak, rep­re­sent­ed a stark con­trast to the rigid lead­ers con­sumed by their own pow­er. These indi­vid­u­als worked tire­less­ly, dri­ven by a belief in a bet­ter future, even when the odds were stacked against them. They did not allow cyn­i­cism to dic­tate their actions, nor did they accept the sta­tus quo as immov­able. In them, I saw the ener­gy, cre­ativ­i­ty, and deter­mi­na­tion that could trans­form soci­eties from the ground up.

Their com­mit­ment remind­ed me of why I had entered pol­i­tics in the first place. Despite the frus­tra­tions, the set­backs, and the chal­lenges that came with lead­er­ship, it was moments like this that reaf­firmed my belief in the pow­er of peo­ple to shape their own des­tinies. As I looked out at their hope­ful, eager faces, I felt a renewed sense of pur­pose. The fatigue of the long day’s meet­ings, the weight of diplo­mat­ic nego­ti­a­tions, and the exhaus­tion of nav­i­gat­ing com­plex inter­na­tion­al rela­tions all seemed to fade away. In that moment, I knew I was exact­ly where I belonged—among those who believed in change, who refused to set­tle, and who under­stood that the future was not some­thing to be dic­tat­ed by those in pow­er but some­thing to be built by those will­ing to fight for it.