A resurfaced video of the late celebrity chef and travel documentarian Anthony Bourdain shows him giving his brutal opinion of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The clip of Bourdain's remarks is making waves again in the wake of Putin's announcement that he would send 300,000 reservists into Ukraine to continue fighting a war that has angered much of the international community and created the worst humanitarian crisis Europe has seen in decades.
An episode of Bourdain's show Parts Unknown that aired on May 11, 2014 opens with a montage of anti-Putin protests accompanied by Bourdain's rather pointed voiceover.
You can watch the clip and hear what Bourdain said by clicking on the video below.
Bourdain said:
“No matter how transparently autocratic, vengeful, oblivious to even a thin veneer of democracy, Russians love [Putin]."
"They seem to feel about him like New Yorkers used to feel about [former Mayor Rudy] Giuliani: he may be a son of a b*tch, but he’s our son of a b*tch.” ...
“Bad things seem to happen to critics of Vladimir Putin. Journalists, activists, even powerful oligarchs once seemingly untouchable are now fair game if they displease The Leader."
Bourdain is later shown in conversation with Boris Nemtsov, a vocal Putin critic who would be assassinated in 2015 while working on a report demonstrating Russian troops were fighting alongside pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, which the Kremlin had been denying.
Bourdain recalled:
“I ask [Nemtsov] directly, ‘Aren’t you concerned? The enemies of Vladimir Putin, bad things have happened to them,’ and he laughed it off and said, ‘It would be too embarrassing. I’m too important. I’m a public figure.’"
"One has to wonder if that was in somebody’s mind as they shot him to death pretty much on the front lawn of the Kremlin. It’s not like they don’t want you to know who done it, you know?"
"When they kill somebody with nerve gas or radioactive polonium in Central London, they want you to know who done it. That’s the whole point.”
Later, upon learning Russia had invaded Crimea and mobilized its troops at the Ukrainian border, a weary Bourdain observes the world "has done nothing" and "will do nothing" as Putin "well knew."
Bourdain's remarks attained a certain prescience amid Putin's attempts to gain the upper hand in the ongoing war given that Putin counted on the international community's ambivalence to invade Ukraine in the first place—though he did not account for the strength of the Ukrainian resistance.
Many have praised the late celebrity's razor sharp observations.
The late Bourdain was often praised for his articulate observations and acerbic wit.
Earlier this month, social media users resurfaced a clip from Season 3 of Parts Unknown of him bluntly saying he "hates the aristocracy" in response to someone who'd toasted Queen Elizabeth II during a dinner.
The clip made the rounds on social media shortly after Buckingham Palace confirmed that the Queen had died at the age of 96, ending her 70-year reign as Britain's longest reigning monarch.
