(Miscellaneous comments from pieces dealing with Russia I’ve collected. Most of them anonymous or with pseudonyms, they illustrate either rabid hostility to everything Russian or stone-dead ignorance of reality. I post from time to time when I see them, spelling mistakes and all.)
For Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a gangster state in which opponents of his regime — whether inside or outside the country — are routinely executed.
Yet we have become so football-mad as a nation, despite our limited prowess, that few commentators or politicians dare to raise a squeak of protest that we should be taking part in Putin’s propaganda extravaganza…
Yesterday morning, we were told a Russian journalist called Arkady Babchenko had been dispatched in the Ukraine, seemingly by Russian agents. It soon transpired that Babchenko is alive and well, and that his apparent murder was a carefully conceived stunt by the Ukrainian government to expose his alleged Russian assassins.
Russia Observer 