It's debatable whether Russia is a western nation at all, but if they are, then they are on the short bus of western civ.
Interesting article. Thanks for posting.
Russia can bite our collective nutsac.The barbaric authoritarians need to go back to what the do best murder journalist and buisnessmen who dont tag the government line,take over countries, and destroy democracy. Disgusting lot.
A lot of bashing of Russia on this thread. Fact is, Putin's Russia has only begun to dig itself out from under the rubble of seventy years of Communist totalitarianism and of its autocratic past under the Tsars as well. Russia seen as non-Western is a product of those times. Also, Russia never experienced the Rennaissance, which is held to be the dawn of the modern era in the West.
Putin's remarks were his attempt to say, "we all have similar problems now, we nations of the West! C'mon, guys, I'm a member of the `club of the West', aren't I?"
There is among many in Russia great nostalgia for the days of the glorious, feared USSR. But restoring the old Soviet empire is a chimera; even once-subjugated Ukraine now thumbs its nose at Moscow.