Q 01/05

Putin told parliament in 2005 that the collapse of which state was a geopolitical catastrophe?

A) Czechoslovakia

B) The Soviet Union

C) Yugoslavia

D) The Russian Empire

Answer · why

B) The Soviet Union

The Soviet Union. His reasoning: the break-up left tens of millions of Russians outside Russia's borders, and an 'epidemic of disintegration' then inf...

Q 02/05

In June 2023 Putin faced a brief armed mutiny led by the boss of which mercenary force?

A) Blackwater

B) The Azov Regiment

C) The Akhmat battalion

D) The Wagner Group

Answer · why

D) The Wagner Group

The Wagner Group. Yevgeny Prigozhin's fighters seized Rostov-on-Don and drove towards Moscow before turning back within a day; two months later he die...

Q 03/05

Putin's grandfather Spiridon worked as a personal cook to which two Soviet leaders?

A) Khrushchev and Brezhnev

B) Lenin and Stalin

C) Trotsky and Bukharin

D) Stalin and Beria

Answer · why

B) Lenin and Stalin

Lenin and Stalin. Putin told the story himself in a 2018 interview; Spiridon outlived both men and kept cooking for the Soviet elite until shortly bef...

Q 04/05

Putin's brother Viktor died in 1942 during which wartime event?

A) The Battle of Stalingrad

B) The Battle of Kursk

C) The Battle of Moscow

D) The Siege of Leningrad

Answer · why

D) The Siege of Leningrad

The Siege of Leningrad. Viktor was a toddler when he died of diphtheria in the starving city, and the blockade nearly killed both parents too; Putin w...

Q 05/05

In 2001 Putin delivered most of a speech to a foreign parliament in which language?

A) English

B) French

C) Chinese

D) German

Answer · why

D) German

German. He told the Bundestag he would switch to 'the language of Goethe, Schiller and Kant', polished during his years as a KGB officer in East Germa...