afx: That’s frickin’ hilarious, coming from the Russians. You look at the Soviets, especially starting with the 1956 invasion of Hungary and culminating with Afghanistan 1979, and their proxy support of all those “Wars of National Liberation”, and they are passing judgment on us? Uh, yeah, okay.
And don’t have any illusions about the “new” Russia. It’s the “old” Russia all over again.
Putin will use whatever pretext is necessary to re-establish Russian dominance in the region, and the US and NATO are nothing other than convenient foils for his ambitions. Russia is using a combination of soft power (through controlling energy resources and transmission of same to Europe) and hard power (in the form of power projection) to bring greater glory to Mother Russia.
Putin is former KGB, and a member of Pamyat, an ultranationalist movement solely dedicated to “Russian national revival”. If any of this rings any bells regarding another ultranationalist bent on regional domination in Europe, it should.
