It's either reincarnation, or there's some eternal spirit from Hell that throughout centuries has been possessing people in power and molding their faces to match a certain archetype.

Below are British WWI cartoons (targeted for both Brits and the French) depicting Crown Prince Wilhelm (1882-1951), the last Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire. Nicknamed "Willie" by the Brits, he commanded German troops in an unsuccessful effort to destroy the French armies in Europe, and was treated with contempt by his father Kaiser Wilhelm II because of his many affairs with women.

Without knowing this background, they look like stylized modern-day cartoons of Vladimir Putin.
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And before that, there was this 1434 painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, of a powerful Italian merchant Giovanni Arnolfini and his pregnant Dutch wife or mistress. Putin's own mistress, the Olympic gymnastics medalist Alina Kabayeva, is now giving birth to his child in Switzerland. Go figure.

Comrade,

all true, just today I found a picture of him from his much younger days

Did Wilhelm's "beak" provided the inspiration?