>>>Russia becoming more open and free? With the clamps down on free speech that are already on the record? With the police being a bit too free with the truncheon? With Putin (and his KGB background) getting his third term as president? With the government buying controlling shares in what are supposed to be private companies? Should we get into the assassinations too . . . ?<<<
In fact KGB and Police are pretty much more restrained in Russia under Putin comparing to Yeltsin’s regime.
There is a rule of law of some kind for investors who aren’t about to exploit corruption for their interest.
Ask Ford, IKEA etc. They have exposed any nasty approach from Russian politicians and unions and nobody dare to touch them ever since.
Both makes billions in Russia now.
Oh please. This sounds exactly like the same kind of propaganda used to get people to invest in Red China. And for the record, Red China is the one country in the world that Russia is getting closer and closer to. Putin is going further away from the West (I don’t mean the EU); and I will never be convinced of any of the pro-Putin propaganda on here until he becomes openly friendly to Israel and the USA (which he is neither) and stops investing in Iran particularly.
The last comparison in the Western media to a past Russian leader that was used for Putin was to Tsar Nicholas I. Seems to fit, what with the efforts to build his “Eurasian Union” (the name derived from “European Union”, of course) out of the former Soviet Union (which the EU itself is patterned on). This is a man who does not think of World War II as the twentieth century’s greatest geopolitical catastrophe; instead, in his view, that was the fall of the USSR.