thumb|A Putinversteher logo similar to what may be seen on T-shirts, mugs, and the like Putinversteher or Putin-Versteher (, female form Putinversteherin) is a German neologism (Putin + verstehen), which literally translates to "Putin understander", i.e. "one who understands Putin". It is a pejorative reference to politicians and pundits who express empathy to Vladimir Putin and may also be translated as "Putin-Empathizer". Similar words include Russlandversteher and Russland-Versteher ("Russia-Empathizer").
thumb|A Putinversteher logo similar to what may be seen on T-shirts, mugs, and the like Putinversteher or Putin-Versteher (, female form Putinversteherin) is a German neologism (Putin + verstehen), which literally translates to "Putin understander", i.e. "one who understands Putin". It is a pejorative reference to politicians and pundits who express empathy to Vladimir Putin and may also be translated as "Putin-Empathizer". Similar words include Russlandversteher and Russland-Versteher ("Russia-Empathizer").
== Origin == The term was first used in March 2014 by the German publications Der Spiegel and Die Welt, shortly after the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation. Der Spiegel used the term when Die Linke politician Sahra Wagenknecht and other party members said that the annexation of Crimea was understandable and justified, arguing that Russia's "legitimate interests in the region" must be taken into consideration. That same month, Die Welt labelled some other people that, who, they view as going too far in their "understanding" of Putin. Foremost was former Social Democratic of Germany (SPD) leader and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, whose supporters were also irritated by his closeness to Putin.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).