Putin wants missile defense details

Barack Obama wants an arms control deal with Russia. Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants details about our missile defense systems before any deal moves forward:

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia will build new weapons to offset the planned U.S. missile defense and urged Washington to share detailed data about its missile shield under a new arms control deal.

The hell of this is that Obama has already kow-towed to Moscow and scrapped the planned missile defense system deployment in eastern Europe, but in his eagerness to appease bad guys throughout the world, he'll probably agree.

Russian president wants to meet with American "dissidents"

I had it wrong on Twitter earlier this evening. I thought I'd heard earlier in the evening that Vladimir Putin wanted to meet with American dissidents when he visits the US. I was way off. I should have known the whole idea was ridiculous...how silly of me.

It was Dmitri Medvedev who said he wants to meet with American dissidents! Boy, do I ever feel like a dork.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says he would like to meet with "dissidents" when he visits the U.S. next week.

Russian news agencies quote him as telling a group of visiting foreign experts that "I believe there are dissidents in the United States."

Yeah, you bet your vodka-soaked ass there are dissidents in the US, sport. We're just not sent off to the gulags. Yet.

Tell you what, D. Come on over to my place and we'll talk.

Putin facing internal dissent, too

In a follow-up to yesterday's post about growing popular unrest in Czar Putin's Russia, things are actually worse better than I thought.

The protests, which began on Dec 14, rapidly took on a political hue and Mr Putin, who is intolerant of dissent, ordered the Kremlin's top officials in the far east to use force next time. But senior adminstrators refused to intervene and a week later the government was forced to send a special detachment of riot police from Moscow to break up a second protest in Valdivostok.

Furious that he had again been disobeyed, Mr Putin directed Vladislav Surkov, his top ideologue, to sack the newly appointed head of internal affairs in Primorye, the region surrounding Vladivostok.

But the official, Maj Gen Andrei Nikolayev, flatly refused to leave his post. Sources say he threatened to expose corruption linked to the Kremln in the Russian far east if Mr Putin pressed ahead.

Such a gesture of defiance is almost unheard of in Russia. Gen Nikolayev was supposed to be the man entrusted by the Kremlin to keep regional officials under control.

It seems that Vladimir Putin has two choices. He can back off and let democracy (such as it actually exists in Russia) run its course, or he can drop the mask, exposing himself as the totalitarian that he is and drop all pretenses of democracy.

Any bets against the latter?

Putin's popular support nosediving in Russia

Russians are a fickle bunch it seems. As long as oil and gas prices were flying high and Russia was bullying small neighboring states, they loved their Vladimir Putin, whether as president or prime minister.

But with Russia's economy circling the drain along with everyone else's, old Vladimir isn't looking so hot any more.

The march was sanctioned on the condition that demonstrators kept off the road, carried no banners and chanted no slogans. [That's not a demonstration, that's just a bunch of people walking on the sidewalk. --ed.]

The marchers blithely ignored the restrictions. Marching down the city's main street, they chanted "Putin resign!". Some banners [even compared] the prime minister to Hitler.

Although only several hundred began the march, ordinary passersby applauded in encouragement as they passed and many even joined them. By the time the demonstrators reached their finishing point in a square dominated by a statue of Lenin, their number had swelled to nearly 2,000.

It might not seem like a huge number, but the government has reason to be worried. Russia is a country where most dissenters -- save for a small hardcore group led by former chess champion Garry Kasparov - have been cowed into submission.

If the unrest spreads, watch for Putin to enact some form of emergency measures to completely stifle dissent (even more so than now) and stay in power indefinitely.