A former Russian spy and sharp critic of Vladimir Putin, Alexander Litvinenko, gets poisoned to death in London. Mr. Litvinenko had an intense interest in revealing who murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was just the latest in a string of Russian journalists who've been murdered in the last half-decade in and outside of Russia. Additionally, Boris Khodorkovsky, a billionaire critic and political rival of Vladimir Putin's, received 20 years for essentially trumped-up charges. At the same time, while Russia (and China) consistently block any sanctions against the soon-to-be nuclear Islamic Republic of Iran on the U.N. Security Council, they sell anti-aircraft missles to said Iranians. Putin has also dispatched the head of Russia nuclear agency to Iran this past week.
Draw your own conclusions from this, but these are mine:
Putin is consolidating his power by slowly but surely eliminating all dissent in the press, in business, or by Russian defectors. Putin is former KGB; he is a formidible man intellectually, and was inculcated with a cold-blooded, Stalinist ethic through his KGB experiences. He is clearly seeking to destroy Russian democracy (fragile as it is) internally, while he is using the Iranians to do his dirty work (i.e. wage jihad on the West). It would not surprise me to find out that Russia has increased its military budget significantly in the last five years. Where this leads to, I don't know. But it is no place desireable.
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