‘A kind of James Bond figure’ Three years after Zhirinovsky’s death, successor Leonid Slutsky pushes to rebrand the ultra-nationalist LDPR as Russia’s ‘party of diplomacy’

For 30 years, the deceptively named Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) was defined by its larger-than-life founder, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. A bombastic ultranationalist, Zhirinovsky openly espoused expansionist views and demonized the West…