>Still sounded bit strange coming from you. Almost as if our good old oGrady hacked somehow into your account from his igloo bunker,
>to cast blows at that communist SOB Putin!! :))

We are in a special position here, with our dangling just outside of the narrower Europe (while having all of their bureaucratic bullshit copied into our laws, or sometimes not even laws but kind of directives, what with translation errors), where Russia figures in its traditional role. Which is that of an older and strong cousin who would allegedly threaten any bully in the street from breaking our nose. Which, of course, doesn't happen every time, for the very reason that the cousin has his own interests to take care of, and we may be in the way at times.

In that sense, Putin seems to be exactly what doctor prescribed, but not for us. For Russia. He's the guy who, surprisingly, has Russia's interests in mind all day, somehow forgetting to turn the country into a colony of the banksters, to give the appropriate answer to "who owns your oil" etc etc. Of course he will be denigrated in the western media - just like any other sufficiently independent player who doesn't lie down and play dead whenever IMF et al just fart in his general direction. Actually, I've seen this kind of reheat of cold war for the last ten years.

Of course he's no flower. But then neither is any of the major players in that game anywhere.