Russian President Vladimir Putin attends his annual end-of-year news conference in Moscow, December 18, 2014. The rouble edged lower against the dollar on Thursday, with traders saying Putin had offered few concrete measures at his end-of-year news confer
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends his annual end-of-year news conference in Moscow, December 18, 2014. The rouble edged lower against the dollar on Thursday, with traders saying Putin had offered few concrete measures at his end-of-year news conference to pull Russia out of a crisis. Reuters/Stringer

Russian President Vladimir Putin has come in for harsh criticism by Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, Joseph Stalin’s grandson. Stalin was Russia’s unchallenged dictator and an iconic nation builder who ruled the country for three decades.

Responding to Mr Putin’s macho acts in a recent video, where he appears shirtless and is seen taming and riding a horse in great style, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili said it is "all a publicity stunt and only showed how the president was leading the country without brains.” He also said the mess in Russia would have been avoided if Stalin had lived for five more years, reports The Independent.

Putin’s Shortcomings

Turning to Mr Putin’s shortcomings compared to Stalin, Dzhugashvili told the Mail Online, “They want people to feel pity. And to get support for him out of this pity.” He added that the West wants to get rid of Mr Putin. “The aim is to get an opposite reaction from our people. They are supposed to shout, ‘We won't give away our Putin.’”

This proud grandson, now aged 79, is in a battle mood. He even filed a defamation case against a Russian publication for describing his grandfather Stalin as a “bloodthirsty cannibal.”

However, the European Court of Human Rights, in its ruling in January, found nothing derogatory in the 2009 article in Novaya Gazeta, which explored Stalin’s role in the 1940 massacre of 22,000 Polish nationals by the Soviet secret police at Katyn. The court said it is natural that as a world leader, Stalin inevitably remains open to public scrutiny and criticism.

Russia Betrayed

Many Western historians still blame Joseph Stalin for an estimated 40 million deaths during his 30-year reign. Dzhugashvili also blasted the Russian government for working with Poland on a joint commission into the Katyn massacres. He said the “tricksters and thieves” at the Kremlin had betrayed the country in a way Stalin never would have, reports Mail Online.

Dzhugashvili also took comfort in the snub Putin received in not getting an invite to the 70th anniversary of the Aushwitz event where prisoners were rescued by the Red Army from Nazi death camp. He said they have wiped up the floor with Putin.

Meanwhile, the World Bulletin in a report referred to the formation of the new Eurasia Economic Union and the speculation that it is like a step towards the reunification of the erstwhile Soviet Union. The economic union came into being on Jan.18 and allows for free movement of trade, services and capital among some of the former Soviet states. Belarus is its first president.