Putin: the brutal despot who is dragging the West into a new Cold War

Putin: the brutal despot who is dragging the West into a new Cold War
-dailymail

Few things embodied Stalinist terror more than the midnight knock on the door. For millions of innocent victims it heralded torture and a lengthy sentence in the Communist concentration camps of the Gulag. Now the heirs of Stalin’s secret police are running Russia - and there could be few clearer signs of their true nature than the British Council’s Russian staff being hauled from their beds to answer for the “crime” of working for a foreign employer.
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The KGB regime in Russia … is also a direct threat to us. The best example: Alexander Litvinenko, a strident critic of Mr Putin. Poisoned with a rare radioactive isotope, polonium-210, at a meeting with three Russians, this British citizen died an agonising death; his last words directly blamed Mr Putin for his murder. At the very least, careless handling of toxic radioactive substances is a crime and Andrei Lugovoi left a trail of polonium in his travels across Europe.
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Putin can hold the West to ransom because of Russia’s huge gas and oil deposits…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=509177&in_page_id=1811

Interesting to see how the public criticism against Putin and his regime is increasing, and if that affects the relations between EU and Russia - or will Russia just mute EU with “gas delivery breakdown” - threat.

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I think that Russia needs the EU more than the EU needs Russia. All we have to do is build more Nuclear stations.

I would also hazard a guess that all the money we pay for fuel to Russia does not benefit that country as much as it should.

I think there is a bit of hyperbole in this thread. And I am no fan of Putin, but he’s hardly Stalin…

I agree Nickdfresh, he is no Stalion, but what is he? I believe he is a bit of an enigma to the west, with a murky background and a rather humourless face. Plus he can be tough when he wants to be.

Is he a man to be messed with? No. That is obvious, but we don’t live in Russia, we don’t fully comprehend what it is like to live under regimes that were brutal. Is the putin regime brutal? I cannot answer that. But I think he does what needs to be done to stay in power.

Digger