“They showed the entire world how he was killed, covered in blood,” Putin, visibly angry, said during a televised press conference at the time. “Is that democracy?”
In May 2012, not long after Gaddafi’s overthrow, Putin returned to the presidency after a stint as prime minister. He took to the job on an apparent mission to break with the West and root out domestic dissent, which he accused of seeking to work with Russia’s enemies to achieve regime change.
“It was precisely Gaddafi’s death that became a turning point in Russian politics — both foreign and domestic,” writes Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center based in Berlin.
That the U.S. and Europe would allow a global leader to be overthrown so brutally was seen by Putin, a former KGB agent, as “the height of treachery,” Baunov said.
With the passing of years, Putin has sunk into increasing isolation.
During the Covid pandemic, foreign dignitaries and Russian officials alike were required to stay several meters away from the Russian president. Interactions with the public were, and still are, carefully choreographed.