The Russian president runs rings around the supposed liberal leaders of the west as he advances his authoritarian agenda.
This has been the year of Vladimir Putin's ascendancy. The Russian president has made Barack Obama look like a conman's stooge - a lame duck president so weak that he can barely waddle to the pond. Putin has managed to protect his client dictatorship in Syria - even after it broke one of the few taboos limiting man's inhumanity to man by using chemical weapons. He has Edward Snowden, perhaps the most damaging leaker in recent history, under the vigilant eyes of his secret police in Moscow. He has out-manoeuvred the pro-European demonstrators in Kiev and bought off the Ukrainian government.
At home, his control over the state and civil society is so complete that he can afford to play the merciful tsar and release dissidents and his former rival Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Forbes magazine was not making a mistake when it called Putin the world's most powerful person in 2013. However, the Centre for Strategic Communications, a thinktank for the Kremlin's pet intellectuals, assessed his power more precisely last week when it acclaimed him "world conservatism's new leader". If you can rid yourself of the idea that being a conservative means merely supporting private enterprise, you will see what it meant.
Comment: The Guardian does a good job at painting a bad picture of Putin from the very beginning. Putin was a democratically elected president and has an undisputed popularity rating in Russia that western leaders can only dream about.
Vladimir Putin's Poll Numbers Still Aren't Declining - Forbes
Syria did not use chemical weapons, but the Western terrorists did. This has been verified.
As far as Snowden goes, then he is a whistleblower and his life is threatened in the so-called democratic West....Think Bradley Manning or Julian Assange. John Bolton said a few days ago, that he would like to see Snowden hang from a tall oak tree.
John Bolton: Edward Snowden 'ought to swing from a tall oak tree'
Khodorkovsky was never a rival:
Khodorkovsky created the myth that he is Putin's political opponent AFTER he was sent to prison for being a corporate thief
Comment: It is strange that the author is so clueless as to what would have happened if western powers had imposed no-fly zones. Look at Libya!
You probably did support that too thereby doing the journalistic propaganda bid for regime change. Yes, look at Libya and know that you have blood on your hands too. The fact that western governments have armed thousand of mercenaries in Syria, means thousands of more innocent deaths and a prolongation of the suffering in Syria.