"Supposedly he's our ally in the War on Terror..."
The best of Putin - December 2004:
"Putin denounced the U.S. “dictatorship” in international relations, accused the West of acting like a “kind but strict uncle in a pith helmet” lecturing Russia and ridiculed Bush’s plans for elections in Iraq next month."
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1300014/posts
"I have strong doubts that it's possible to create conditions for democratic elections (in Iraq) when its entire territory is occupied by foreign troops," he said.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1307186/posts
"Today according to our estimates there are nine cities in Iraq where there are hostilities but they still want to carry out elections," he said, condemning European elections monitors' plans to observe the poll from Jordan as a "farce".
"We do not understand how there can be an election in a country under conditions of total occupation... It's absurd. It's a farce. Everything is upside down."
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1307427/posts
Russia has every reason to criticize the United States, President Vladimir Putin said at a Kremlin press conference.
“We’re also not too happy about what’s going on in the United States,” the Russian Information Agency Novosti quoted him as saying. “Do you think that the electoral system in the United States is without problems? Is it necessary to recall how the elections went this time and the previous time?”
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308004/posts
In 2004, Putin declared the collapse of the USSR a "national tragedy on an enormous scale."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin
I know Putin says some pretty weird, anti-Western things. He even defended Slobodan Milosevic, saying the West had victimized him.
But he has a good relationship with Bush and I think he is saying these anti-Western things to voice the concern of all Russians about the isolation of their country. The only country still really allied with Russia is Belarus. They've lost Ukraine, Georgia, the Central Asian states, and just about every other Warsaw Pact nation. Putin is a nationalist, though a wimpish one. We're conservative; if we were Russian, we would probably be saying some of the same things. Many Russians like Stalin because he made their nation strong.
Putin has also supported Bush in the election, and is friends with Bush.
Like I said before, he seems to be a nice person, but he has dreams of resurrecting the Russian empire, so he needs to be watched like a hawk.