Here is the Putin video I referred to in the last post. Thanks to the miracles of WordPress it is now so easy to embed videos that even I can do it…

I am now using this clip in Negotiating or Speechwriting masterclasses as a unique and in a way supreme example of how a leader can reframe an issue on his/her own terms by being bold enough.

Had President Putin asked everyone in Russia to draft him speaking notes to use should a pesky foreign journalist ask about casualties in Chechnya, not a single one among 120 million or so people could have found anything like these words.

Yet what an impression they create. The bravura crudeness and ruthlessness combined in these short sentences send a mighty message to the world public. And to the other leaders sitting uneasily next to him who are listening attentively to the interpreters through their earpieces and wondering whether it was possible that he actually said anything like THAT.

On one level his message is simple: Don’t Mess with Me or with Russia.

But I think that something even more powerful and dark and subtly challenging is in those words and the intensity with which they are given:

I know where you EU leaders live – in the world of declarations and spin and policy papers and process.

I live somewhere else. It’s more different than you can possible imagine. Oh, and where I live I set the rules. 

Come and visit me there – if you dare.

Not a trip many of them will care to make, I suspect.