Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who has died aged 75 after suffering from Covid-19, was an ultra-nationalist Russian politician who used boorish language and behaviour to cultivate an image of being a licensed court jester in the Russian parliament, where he held a seat for close to 30 years. An admirer of Donald Trump, Zhirinovsky outperformed Trump with homophobic and racist invective, and sexual slurs against prominent female politicians.
True to form, he shared the contempt for Ukraine and other former Soviet republics that became the hallmark of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. In 2014 soon after Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was toppled by a nationalist pro-western coup, Zhirinovsky called all Ukrainian women “nymphomaniacs” and urged two of his aides to “violently rape” a pregnant Russian journalist who had asked him a question he did not like.
