Russian President Vladimir Putin is a famously sober man. At the drunken banquets of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, Putin would discreetly dump his drinks into flower pots. It was part of how he differentiated himself: Where Yeltsin was sickly, drunken and unsteady, Putin was virile, clear-headed, stable — whether he was practicing judo, playing hockey or riding on horseback shirtless. Anti-liquor organizations in Russia have invoked his machismo in their “live sober” campaigns, and Putin regularly decries the “alcoholization” of society in his annual state-of-the-union addresses.

But Putin hasn’t passed up the opportunity to use a vice he privately avoids and publicly decries to amass political power and enrich himself. In 2000, the newly inaugurated Putin issued a directive to begin the re-consolidation of Russia’s top revenue-generating industries. He began, strangely, with vodka, launching a hostile takeover of an iconic vodka factory in Moscow. Soon, a Putin-themed brand of vodka, Putinka, was rolling off the assembly line.

But more than boozy propaganda, these enterprises also churn out heaps of money. Where’s it going? Thanks to the work of Russian investigative journalists, we have an idea. According to a bombshell report by independent Russian journalist collective Proekt, Alina Kabaeva, long rumored to be the mother of at least three children Putin fathered, has been living a lavish lifestyle in extravagant homes paid for by a murky shell company in Cypress called Ermira. There have been whispers that it was an offshore slush fund for oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, who is close to Putin. But Proektcited an inside source to report that “the real owner of Ermira is President Putin.” Through Ermira, Proekt reported, Putin and Rotenberg have personally made hundreds of millions of dollars from their control over the Russian vodka industry.

“In the end, the crowning irony of Putin’s reign in Russia — regardless of how it ultimately ends — is that Putin has become synonymous with the very thing he most abhors,” writes Mark Schrad in this sweeping piece on the long history of Russia’s vodka use — not just as a liquor, but as a political weapon. “Yeltsin may have been a drunk, and Putin sober; true. But Yeltsin’s drunkenness was his own cross to bear, he never imposed his addiction on his fellow countrymen.

“By contrast, Putin’s addiction is not to alcohol, but to his own greed, profit and hubris. The means to that end meant keeping Russian society shackled to the vodka bottle.”

Read the story.

“I can’t be too rough on the guy. After his reelection as governor he was asked if he had a mandate. He said, ‘Hell no, I’m straight!’”

Can you guess who said this about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**

The Left Is All Tuckered Out … Last week, an article in the left-wing magazine American Prospect about Tucker Carlson’s economic populism set off a round of controversy from critics who argued the article was overly laudatory and inadequately critical of Carlon’s views on race and other social issues. The criticism led the editor of the American Prospect to issue an apology … which set off another round of controversy among those who saw his response as caving to the Twitter mob. But this wasn’t just another internecine battle between extremely online leftists. It presented a real problem: As the populist right gains steam, increasingly condemning the coziness with corporate power that had defined the GOP and staking out economic positions heretofore taken by progressives, what is the left to do? Reject them outright, or try to build a coalition with the enemy? “So far, there’s little consensus on the question, and a high danger of vitriol in cases where it comes up, even when the cases don’t involve a lightning-rod like Carlson,” writes Michael Schaffer in this week’s Capital City column.

Next week, the lifting of Title 42, which allows the U.S. to expel asylum-seeking migrants on public health grounds, will cause a seismic shift at the southern border. You could spend the rest of your life poring over the decades worth of info that has led to this moment. Or you could follow these tips to keep up (from POLITICO’s Myah Ward):

- When someone mentions Title 42 as a border policy, kindly deliver a correction: “Actually, Title 42 is a public health authority, not an immigration policy.”

- Mention how you’re really interested in seeing how many regional processing centers the U.S. stands up in Guatemala and Colombia. The number of these centers will help determine how prepared immigration authorities are to address the increased flow of migrants, and that could make or break the public’s perception of whether they’re handling it well or badly.

- How about that joint statement from the U.S. and Mexico that came out this week? It marks a huge legal shift: Never in U.S. history has another country agreed to accept a large number of migrants the U.S. has deported who aren’t nationals of that country.

- Get the policy wonks going with this text, but be prepared to spark a political debate: “Enough about Title 42, what do you think about the return to Title 8 and that new asylum rule?” Title 8, which has been in effect since 1940, allows for the expedited removal of migrants without a legal basis for remaining in the U.S.

- Pay close attention to the legal challenge of President Joe Biden’s humanitarian parole program, a policy that accepts 30,000 eligible migrants a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. If a judge blocks this, it could spell bad news for the deal the U.S. has struck with Mexico.

The Case for King Charles … Forget your group chat quibbles over Harry vs. William. The tedious younger members of the British royal family are of little interest, at least to Alex Burns. He’s not pro-this kid or anti-that kid. He’s staked out a more contrarian position as a King Charles stan. For one thing, the King has long cared deeply about climate change. But that’s not the only reason to admire the much-maligned monarch. “The political reporter in me cannot help admiring King Charles III for another reason, and that is his sheer durability as a public figure over decades of humiliation (much of it self-inflicted) and seething public scorn,” Burns writes in his Tomorrow column. “In this respect he is a fitting monarch for our times.”

The Two Tennessees … Growing up in Tennessee, poet and author Ishmael Reed saw two versions of whiteness. There was the whiteness of the man who stabbed his grandfather to death, the whiteness of the doctor who reportedly used racial slurs over his deathbed in the hospital, the whiteness of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest valorized as a statue in Memphis. But there was also the whiteness of the family that pulled strings to help Reed’s mother, Thelma, find housing, the whiteness of the woman who advocated for her to get a settlement after Thelma herself was stabbed on a Knoxville bus during a race riot, the whiteness of the soldiers who died alongside their Black countrymen in the massacre at Fort Pillow during the Civil War. Now, following the high-profile expulsion and reinstatement of Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson in the statehouse, Reed wonders which road the people of Tennessee will choose next. “I named my daughter Tennessee because its origin is a Cherokee word that means ‘the bend in the river,’” he writes in this personal essay about his family’s fraught relationship to the state. “I figured her generation and the succeeding ones would steer Tennessee, a beautiful country of rivers and mountains, one of God’s sweet spots on earth, into a new direction.”

**Who Dissed answer: That would be Dark Brandon himself, President Joe Biden, poking fun at DeSantis’ anti-LGBTQ policies while speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last week. 

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