At least that’s what Bogdan Kipling is calling Vladmir Putin’s new style of Russian government.

A year ago I had a long talk with Irina Yasina, director of Open Russia, a non-government organisation attempting to teach democracy in a land where a communist dictatorship had ruled for 75 years. We want to be a “normal country”, she said, and her plain words cut to the heart of the Putin problem. She, and millions of Russians like her, want normality. Vladimir Putin wants an aberration. He is promoting a form of Borscht-style fascism.

Whatever it is, it ain’t democracy.

During the Cold War, no one took terrorism seriously because we were focused on Russia.

Today, no one is taking Russia seriously because we are focused on terrorism.

Maybe it’s time to start worrying.

MOSCOW - At a major security conference this past weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted the US for its militaristic approach to foreign policy, saying its actions were “nourishing an arms race.”

But little noticed amid the sharp US and European response to Mr. Putin’s comments is Russia’s burgeoning military-industrial complex, generally thought to have collapsed with the Soviet Union.

The cold war days when the USSR matched the US missile-for-missile may be gone. But experts say that Russia is increasingly capable of turning out cutting-edge weaponry and selling it to countries that are shunned by Western suppliers.

And those “shunned countries,” like Syria and Iran, could be working on ways to get those high-tech gizmos into the hands of the bad guys.

Bad guys like Hezbollah, Hamas, and terrorist/insurgent elements in Iraq.

Moscow understands that this could make the United States a bit jumpy. So they’re trying to keep it on the down-low the old-fashioned way.

MOSCOW - A journalist who fell to his death from a fifth-story window had received threats while gathering material for a report claiming Russia planned to provide sophisticated weapons to Syria and Iran, his newspaper said Tuesday.

Ivan creeps me out. They’re looking to boost their military to Cold War levels, bleeding off (literally) opposition to the state, and are selling sophisticated military hardware to all five Official State Sponsors of Terorrism.

Russia’s chief export is destablization. That and the AK-47, but I suppose the two are related. Either way, these guys are bad news bears for the War on Terrorism.

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