MEAWW.COM / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

Meet the ONE PERSON who may be able to talk sense into Putin

The war and poverty during the Siege of Leningrad took a heavy toll on Putin's childhood, which also lacked the warmth and love of his parents

There is one person who could possibly talk Russian President Vladimir Putin out of his invasion of Ukraine as his forces continue to annihilate the war-torn nation.

Vera Dmitriyevna Gurevich, Putin's teacher from fifth to eighth grade, was a mother figure to the Russian strongman, whose own mother Mariya Ivanova was withdrawn after having suffered multiple psychological traumas in life. Putin's two older brothers died during infancy during the Siege of Leningrad -- the modern-day St. Petersburg. Meanwhile, his mother nearly died from starvation and was thrown into piles of corpses until she let out a weak moan, signaling she was still alive.

RELATED ARTICLES

How Vladimir Putin went from a 'romantic teenager' to a leader threatening world peace

Friends force Putin's mistress Alina Kabaeva to PERSUADE him to end Ukraine war

The war and poverty took a heavy toll on Putin's childhood, which also lacked the warmth and love of his parents. Putin was thus mentored by his homeroom teacher Gurevich. Rebekah Koffler, author of  “Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America," wrote in an op-ed for the New York Post how the influence of Gurevich and his judo instructor Anatoliy Rakhlin put Putin on a path to legitimate power instead of becoming a convict or "a lost soul."

Gurevich shared in her memoir “Vladimir Putin. Parents. Friends. Teachers.” how Putin was a troubled youth who easily got into fights. She remembered him being “very agile, restless, with overflowing energy. He couldn’t sit still, constantly looking into his classmates’ notepads, left, right, and behind, and diving under his desk to pick up a pen or a pencil that he was dropping all the time." She wrote how young “Volodya” was embroiled in fights and “would claw himself into the offender, hang on him with his entire weight and grab him, fighting like a bulldog."

Gurevich recounted a visit she paid to the Russian strongman's parents in September 1964, when he was 11 years old. She said they lived in a "cold, communal apartment in a vermin-infested building" and learned that Putin had associated himself with a group of ruffians who had a "bad influence on him." The tutor had visited to have a talk with Putin, but she soon realized that he was "a latchkey kid, living alone until 5 o’clock in the evening, surviving on a piece of bread and a bottle of milk or buttermilk, even though his mother had prepared his supper," Koffler wrote. “Enough bumming around, get busy with school,” Gurevich once instructed her pupil, to which he responded saying he “could do his entire homework within one hour if he wanted to," she remembered.

However, “Volodya” would eventually become serious about his academics. Gurevich, who was also his German language instructor, gave Putin all the attention he lacked growing up. She became a friend and mentor even outside of school, with Putin occasionally helping her out by babysitting her daughters whenever she taught at a technical school for architects in the evening and her husband was out on a business trip. She recalled Putin would often stay the night, and soon started getting good grades before opting to study law.

Putin's parents died from cancer within months of each other in 1999, the same year former Russian President Boris Yeltsin announced he was appointing the then-Prime Minister as acting president of the Russian Federation. He was eventually elected for his first full term as commander-in-chief on March 26, 2000, with nearly 53 percent of votes. During his annual “Direct Line with the President,” Putin revealed that he regularly calls Gurevich, now 88, to ask about her well-being. 

"His love for her is unmistakable and evidenced in several photos and videos of Putin with Gurevich over the years," Koffler noted in the Post. "When he is with her, the ruthless Russian dictator’s face lights up and a rarely seen warmth envelops him." She concluded, "If we have any hope of stopping Putin’s carnage in Ukraine, Vera Gurevich may be our best bet. If the United States, thinking outside the box, can somehow reach her, maybe she could once again divert her former student from the wrong path."