Why do English native speakers call Putin "Vlad")?

English as a Second Language What do you want to talk about?
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I have often read and heard native speakers of English, especially Americans referring to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president as “Vlad”. The funny thing about this is that the short forms of Putin’s first name are Vova or Vovka but not “Vlad”.

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Vlad is a short form of the name Vladislav.

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Maybe they want to say Vladimir but full name is too difficult to pronounce. And what about your leader, Angela, she has a beautiful name, and Russian people dont change it what about German? Today is Angela Merkel`s birthday I wish her all the best. I do believe our leaders love their countries and people deep in their hearts. - YouTube

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The way I see it this: We, the people, the masses, don’t want to be bothered with taking responsibility for tough decisions that need to be made on a daily basis so we give a small number of people the authority to make those decisions on our behalf. This way we buy ourselves a life filled with small, personal problems. The price for this simple life is that we have leaders we have no or very little influence on. It’s all a big show where everyone lies and plays games trading our true values for piece of mind.

Some centuries ago we allowed to be ruled and exploited by kings and now our governments are fulfilling the role of showing us that evolution is painfully slow if it even exists.

As for love, all our leaders truly love is a feeling of absolute power. But any people has exactly the government and life it deserves. In other words, collectively, every single member of any society is as corrupt as its leadership.

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What about the US? Obama and Tramp are completely different leaders but how could the nation and each person change so quickly?

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Yes, Obama and Trump stand for very different values but both represent large parts of the US population. So, I don’t think that the American nation has changed that much for the past 10 or so years. Trump has been facing strong opposition from many Americans who don’t share his values but as long as the economy is in good shape no real change is going to happen.

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