Why Sir Basil Markesinis Considered Vladimir Putin A Remarkable Leader

ΕΑΝ ΠΡΟΤΙΜΑΤΕ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΠΑΤΗΣΤΕ ΤΗ ΣΗΜΑΙΑ ΣΤΟ ΚΑΤΩ ΜΕΡΟΣ ΤΗΣ ΟΘΟΝΗΣ

OUR MAIN IMAGE: The two men, the most erudite Sir Basil Markesinis and Vladimir Putin.

What one of Europe’s great legal minds saw in Putin that Western leaders failed to understand. Imagination, courage, strategy and results: The qualities Markesinis believed define a true leader. Also: strategic intelligence, decisiveness, resourcefulness—and the courage to lead.

By Helleniscope’s Editorial Team

There are opinions about Vladimir Putin that can easily be dismissed as partisan. And then there is the judgment of Sir Basil Markesinis.

That distinction matters.

Markesinis was one of the most distinguished Greek intellectuals of his generation. The British Academy described him as “one of the world’s leading comparative lawyers of his generation.” He taught at some of the great universities of Europe and America, he was a member of the most prestigious Academias in Europe and America, wrote more than forty books, was made Honorary Queen’s Counsel and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to international relations. He was considered the top authority globally on international law!

Greek biographical accounts describe him as having advised political leaders including Bill Clinton, Helmut Kohl and Jacques Chirac. Helleniscope, in its tribute after his death, also recorded his advisory relationships with Queen Elizabeth II, Nicolas Sarkozy, Russia and China.

Whatever the exact formal title attached to each relationship, the larger point is clear: Markesinis spent his life among statesmen, senior judges, diplomats and governments. He understood power.

And he thought deeply about leadership.

That is what makes his judgment of Vladimir Putin so interesting.

What Markesinis meant by “leader”

For Markesinis, holding political office did not automatically make someone a leader.

In a remarkable 2013 interview, he defined a leader as a person who possesses imagination, dares to act and leads from the front:

«Ο ηγέτης είναι ο άνθρωπος που έχει φαντασία… τολμά… ηγείται από μπροστά.»

A leader, he argued, does not simply consult opinion polls and adjust his behavior accordingly.

Elsewhere he expressed the same idea even more sharply:

“There are two kinds of leaders: those who talk, and those who act and win.”

His philosophy of leadership can therefore be reduced to several qualities:

imagination, courage, initiative, strategic intelligence, decisiveness and results.

In his 2012 study Russia and the EU: The Inevitable Rapprochement, he added another memorable principle: clever people seize opportunities, but great people create opportunities.

With that definition in mind, his repeated comments about Putin become far more significant.

1. Putin: “skilful, persistent and effective”

In February 2009, while much of the world was celebrating the arrival of Barack Obama, Markesinis was watching Putin.

Writing in To Vima, he described Putin as:

«επιδέξιος, επίμονος και αποτελεσματικός»

—skilful, persistent and effective.

He also called him a hard negotiator and argued that Putin understood how to use Russia’s cooperation on Iran and Afghanistan as leverage in negotiations with Washington.

Markesinis was identifying one of the qualities he most admired in a statesman: the ability to see several apparently separate issues as parts of the same strategic chessboard.

His advice was simple:

Keep your eyes on Putin.

2. “Those who act and win”

Only days later, Markesinis returned to Putin in an article titled “Georgia, Ukraine and Putin’s Strategy.”

He contrasted European declarations and threats with Putin’s quieter, carefully calculated diplomacy.

And then came the sentence that perhaps best summarizes his assessment:

“There are two kinds of leaders: those who talk, and those who act and win.”

There was little doubt which category Putin occupied.

Markesinis then described him directly as:

«αποτελεσματικός και πολυμήχανος»

—effective and resourceful.

The Greek word πολυμήχανος is particularly revealing. It suggests ingenuity, inventiveness—the ability to find a way when others see only obstacles. It is the classical quality associated with Odysseus.

Markesinis did not merely see Putin as “strong.”

He saw him as strategically inventive.

3. Turning national resources into power

In his 2012 University of Nicosia study, Markesinis examined Putin’s use of Russia’s immense energy resources.

He described this policy as having been “practiced with success by Mr. Putin”: energy wealth was transformed into investment, diplomatic leverage and geopolitical influence.

The important point was not that Russia possessed oil and gas.

It was that Putin understood what to do with them.

A country may possess immense resources and remain weak. Leadership consists in converting those resources into national power.

That was precisely the sort of statesmanship Markesinis respected.

4. Putin explicitly named as a leader

By October 2013 there was no longer any need for inference.

Asked where he saw genuine leadership in the contemporary world, Markesinis explicitly named Vladimir Putin.

And immediately afterward he gave his definition of leadership:

imagination; daring; leading from the front; independence from opinion polls.

This is perhaps the most important evidence of all.

Putin was not simply a foreign politician whose policies Markesinis occasionally approved.

Markesinis himself selected Putin as an example of what he meant by a leader.

The timing was significant. The Syrian chemical-weapons crisis had just ended with a Russian diplomatic initiative that avoided an imminent American strike.

For Markesinis, the test was simple: Who understood the moment? Who took the initiative? Who changed the available choices? Who produced the result?

That was leadership.

5. Ukraine: competence, speed—and an extraordinary prediction

In February 2014, as Ukraine descended into crisis, Markesinis issued an extraordinary warning.

Western governments, he suggested, were seriously underestimating Russia.

Russia was governed, he wrote, by: «μια ιδιαίτερα ικανή ομάδα»

—a particularly capable team—and could act and react much faster than either Europe or America.

Here Markesinis identified another essential characteristic of effective leadership:

speed of decision.

And then he went further.

If Ukraine deteriorated, he predicted, Russia might move to incorporate Russian-populated territory—particularly Crimea—or achieve a similar result through a federal arrangement.

These words were written before Russia seized and annexed Crimea in March 2014.

Whatever one thinks about Markesinis’s political interpretation of the Ukrainian crisis, his ability to anticipate the Russian response was remarkable.

He was doing what serious strategic thinkers must do: looking at the chessboard from the opponent’s side.

6. “An excellent leader for Russia”

Someone once asked him directly whether Putin was a good leader.

His answer was immediate: Putin was an excellent leader for Russia.

A journalist of less than mediocre IQ once asked Markesinis how he could call Vladimir Putin a great leader since he was essentially “not democratically elected and a dictator”.  Markesinis smiled and simply referred to great leaders of history such as Alexander the Great and Napoleon, asking the journalist to tell him whether these were democratically elected… Stupidity has no limits…

In 2009, Putin was skillful, persistent, effective and resourceful.

In 2012, he successfully transformed Russia’s resources into geopolitical power.

In 2013, Markesinis explicitly cited him as an example of leadership: imaginative, daring and prepared to lead from the front.

In 2014, he described the Russian leadership as unusually capable and fast-moving—and correctly anticipated Crimea as the probable focal point of Russia’s response to the Ukrainian crisis.

Just the re-baptizing of Russians into Orthodoxy after 70 years of Communism was enough of an achievement to classify Putin as one of the greatest leaders of modern history.

What Markesinis saw in Putin

Markesinis was not arguing that leadership equals morality. That distinction is crucial.

A statesman may possess formidable leadership qualities while pursuing policies one may regard as wrong, dangerous or even disastrous.

Markesinis was making an analytical judgment about capacity.

When he looked at Putin, he saw a man who understood his country’s interests; who grasped leverage; who converted geography and resources into power; who acted while others deliberated; who could wait when patience served him and move rapidly when circumstances demanded it.

He saw persistence. He saw resourcefulness. He saw strategic imagination.

Above all, he saw something he believed had largely disappeared from Western politics:

a leader willing to lead from the front.

Whether history ultimately judges Vladimir Putin as a great Russian statesman, a destructive authoritarian ruler, or a complicated combination of both is another question.

The narrower historical question is:

What did Sir Basil Markesinis see in Putin? His own words provide the answer.

He saw precisely the qualities by which he defined leadership:

imagination, courage, initiative, strategic intelligence, persistence—and the ability to turn intention into results.

Or, as Markesinis himself put it most memorably:

There are leaders who talk, and leaders who act and win.

He had watched Vladimir Putin closely.

He had decided which kind he was.

HELLENISCOPE’S FOOTNOTE.  In 2010, I was part of the Foreign Policy Committee of the Federation of New York, presided over at the time by Therodore Pavlakos.  Initially, we invited Theodore Kariotis and Sir Basil Markesinis to cooperate on introducing the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) concept of the Law of the Sea and apply it to Greece.  Then we proposed – and the Federation approved – that Markesinis be a Grand Marshall in our parade on 5th Avenue.  Again, the intellectual nothingness of the TNH Publisher Diamataris intervened and asked in a comment that will remain in our community’s history as a monument of stupidity and corruption: “Who is Markesinis and what has he done for the Greek American Community”?? And using his “minions,” he managed to cancel Markesinis’ presence in our parade….

August 12, 2026, www.helleniscope.com

DISCLAIMER: The views and statements expressed in this article constitute constitutionally protected opinions of this author.

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