I don’t trust Putin, nor do I like him. I do respect him.
He is a leader. Our leader is a clown.
Putin knows what Snowden knows. Putin knows Obama is lame duck supreme. He knows Obama will continue to be bogged down by all the scandals and will get nowhere legislatively. He figures he has 2 years to arrange his part of the world the way he wants and that America will be that much further down the pole by then. No matter what we think of him, he has instilled pride in his country and recognizes the religious and moral side as being part of that. Obama is draining these aspects in his quest to diminish us as a country. Obama’s plan to gut the military insures we will not stand behind our allies. Welcome to a changed world.
I feel much the same way. I trust Putin about as far as I could throw a T-72, but I do recognize he is a strong, smart, and *very* capable leader. One who has outmaneuvered the U.S. diplomatically on more than one occasion, I fear.