I wish this were true. The Russians did one good thing in history: They beat back the forces of Muslim conquest into Russia. But the guy who did that was Ivan the Terrible, and he was not a nice guy.
One reason why the Communists took over Russia in 1917 was that the people were sick and tired of being oppressed by the Czar and by Russian aristocrats.
And the roots of the KGB can be traced right back to the Czarist secret police. The Czarist oppressors morphed into the Communist oppressors, and they in turn seem to have morphed into Putin’s oppressors.
I have some respect for the Russian Orthodox Church, but there, too, there is a problem, with the Russian bishops happily working with the oppressors. They cooperated with the Czar, and then with the KGB, and now with Putin. They seem never to have developed the division between secular and religious authorities that appeared in the Catholic Church in the West, when Emperor and Pope went their separate ways.
I had hopes at one time that Bush was right and that we could work with Putin against the threat of China and the threat of Islamic terrorism. We have a common interest in both areas, it would seem. But, no, Putin insists on working with China and helping Muslim terrorists. He has zero interest in working with us—even before Obama came into office.
And spending a little time in Ukraine and Russia on business made me aware that deep in the soul of those people is a fear of the hordes from Asia over running them. Hell, the Chinese are already walking into eastern Russia unopposed.