Vlad

I've been following the political philosopher, Vlad Vexler, on YouTube. He has a very interesting channel where he discusses geopolitical events with a particular focus on the Russo-Ukrainian War and Vladimir Putin. 

As a Russian who lives in the UK, and a political philosopher, Vexler has enormous insights. He holds regular question and answer sessions where he answers, to the best of his ability, questions from his YouTube subscribers. Well worth a listen.

One incidental thing I learned from Vlad is that it's wrong to call Vladimir Putin Vlad. Vlad is apparently short for Vladislav, not Vladimir, and is of Romanian origin. In Russian, shortened and endeared versions of the name are Volodya (and variants with diminutive suffixes: Volod'ka, Volodyen'ka, etc.), Vova (and diminutives: Vovka, Vovochka, etc.), Vovchik, Vovan.