Vladimir Putin: risk-taker who is gambling his country鈥檚 future
In the early 1990s, when he was deputy mayor of St Petersburg, Vladimir Putin was known to a member of the city鈥檚 legislature, Viktor Talanov. A psychologist by profession, Talanov prepared a study of Putin in which he concluded that one of his subject鈥檚 fundamental psychological characteristics was a very high tolerance of risk.