Word: putin
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...what you like about Russian President Vladimir Putin--although you'd be well advised to keep it polite--but he has certainly re-established his country's credibility as a great power. Ten years ago, Russia was in a state of disarray reminiscent of the early 17th century "Time of Troubles." Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, was like a caricature of the disastrous Czar Boris Godunov, on whose watch Russia suffered hunger and humiliation. Plagued by heart trouble and alcohol abuse, Yeltsin had secured re-election in 1996 only by turning the privatization of the Russian energy sector into...
Then Vladimir Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin, Russia got serious, and the Moscow-to-Zurich run lost its cachet...
That was then. In 2007, the Russians were all over Davos once again - Russian politicians thinking ahead to the post-Putin era, and Russian businessmen riding the oil and commodities boom with a look of steely determination. Dmitri Medvedev, Russia 's First Deputy Prime Minister (and a rumored successor to Putin), spoke of Russia as "another country" from the way it had been in 2000, when its economy was marked by low productivity and high inflation...
...mayhem in Baghdad. Iran, thanks to the weakening of American power, is on a roll, and so is Syria, which less than two years ago was shown the door in Lebanon. North Korea has exploded a nuclear device, and Russia is back to its imperial ways, except that Putin is much more effective with his pipelines than was the Politburo with its tanks and missiles. Much of Africa is stuck in poverty, war and disease while Latin America is again succumbing to the false promises of populist demagoguery. Last summer's bloody melee in Lebanon, fought against a Hizballah trained...
British investigators aren't the only folks doggedly pursuing the murder case of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned in November after trying to publish an anti--Vladimir Putin book. Also hot on the trail is JOHNNY DEPP'S production company, Infinitum Nihil, which will adapt Sasha's Story: The Life and Death of a Russian Spy, a forthcoming book by a London journalist. While Litvinenko's dramatic life story may drive Depp to ditch his Pirates of the Caribbean eye patch for a fur hat, Miami Vice director Michael Mann has taken on a competing project, Death...