section_path: Assessments/After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine
section_name: After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine
paragraph_text: After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine
  
  Following mounting civilian casualties during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. president Joe Biden called Putin a war criminal and "murderous dictator". In the 2022 State of the Union Address, Biden said that Putin had "badly miscalculated". The Ukrainian envoy to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya likened Putin to Adolf Hitler. Latvian prime minister Krisjanis Karins also likened the Russian leader to Hitler, saying he was "a deluded autocrat creating misery for millions" and that "Putin is fighting against democracy (...) If he can attack Ukraine, theoretically it could be any other European country".
  
  Lithuania's foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said, "The battle for Ukraine is a battle for Europe. If Putin is not stopped there, he will go further". President Emmanuel Macron of France said Putin was "deluding himself". French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian denounced him as "a cynic and a dictator". Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Putin "a lying, murderous dictator." UK prime minister Boris Johnson also labelled Putin a "dictator" who had authorised "a tidal wave of violence against a fellow Slavic people". Some authors, such as Michael Hirsh, described Putin as a "messianic" Russian nationalist and Eurasianist.
  
  In March 2025, Franklin Foer of The Atlantic said that the 21st century was the "Age of Vladimir Putin". Foer wrote that:
  
  Over the past 25 years, the world has bent to the vision of one man. In the course of a generation, he not only short-circuited the transition to democracy in his own country, and in neighboring countries, but set in motion a chain of events that has shattered the transatlantic order that prevailed after World War II. In the global turn against democracy, he has played, at times, the role of figurehead, impish provocateur, and field marshal. We are living in the Age of Vladimir Putin.