“Vladimir Putin” on The Daily Caller

Russia under prime minister Vladimir Putin is a sham democracy, Mikhail Gorbachev has said in his harshest criticism yet of the ruling regime. (more)

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan (AP) — Vladimir Putin’s name has been put on maps in the ex-Soviet nation of Kyrgyzstan, where lawmakers have named a mountain peak after him. (more)

I think it is finally time to take that trip to Egypt I have been putting off. Chaos. Discontent. Violence in the streets. Witnesses say as many as 10,000 prisoners have escaped amidst the unrest. In Egypt, they call it Cairo. In America, we call it New Jersey. (more)

Two famous personalities collided last November at the world’s first tiger summit in St. Petersburg. (more)

MOSCOW (AP) — To Russian prosecutors, imprisoned oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is guilty of more crimes: They say he stole nearly $30 billion in oil from his own company and laundered the proceeds. To others, he is a dissident who stood up to the powerful Vladimir Putin. (more)

Nude photos in Playboy are apparently no bar to a political career in Russia. At a ceremony in Moscow today, Russian spy Anna Chapman was appointed a leader of the youth branch of Vladimir Putin’s political party, even though she will appear naked in the men’s magazine next month. (more)

Americans can tell when we are being lied to. We’re being lied to when Harry Reid tells us that the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia is a bit of unfinished business that the Senate must ratify because it’s “urgent.” Urgent? If that had been the case, why didn’t Mr. Reid bring the measure up last summer? Or last fall? (more)

Former President George W. Bush said Monday that he did not make a mistake in his initial and often-ridiculed assessment of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, when they first met in 2001 and Bush said he got “a sense of [Putin’s] soul.” (more)

 (more)

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has tried recently to beef-up his image as a manly man or, in the words of his camp, “as a man of deeds in case he returns to the presidency in 2012.”  Putin has accomplished this by appearing “caught on camera” while outdoors fishing, taking long walks and “[enjoying] “events involving the participation of fauna.” (more)

ZURICH (AP) — Picture soccer fans partying where tanks and missiles paraded on Red Square in the Cold War’s darkest days. Imagine high-tech air-conditioned stadiums chilled so players and spectators don’t keel over in the sweltering desert heat of the Middle East. (more)

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is warning that his country will find it necessary to build up its nuclear forces, if the United State’s doesn’t ratify a new arms reduction treaty. (more)

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has offered to share his country’s growing tiger population with other countries to help save the big wild cat from extinction. (more)

MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia’s tough-guy prime minister Vladimir Putin called Hollywood heart-throb Leonardo DiCaprio a real man after the actor’s plane had to make make an emergency landing on the way to a summit on tigers in Putin’s native Saint Petersburg. (more)

His wife may have been number one on Forbes magazine’s 2010 List of World’s Most Powerful Women, but President Barack Obama only takes the second slot on the recently released Forbes 2010 list of Powerful People, putting him a spot below of where he placed on the list last year. (more)

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin recently released a collection of photos “to preserve his image as a man of deeds in case he returns to the presidency in 2012,” The Guardian reports. Rather than accomplish this, however, the glamor shots make Putin look like he’s posing for L.L Bean’s fall catalog. (more)

Advocates of Big Government are forever creative in concocting new justifications for old programs. Supporters of more military spending are no different. One of the most unique arguments is that a bigger Pentagon budget is necessary to simultaneously protect and suppress the Europeans. (more)

My annual pilgrimage to New Jersey this summer, where I grew up but which I no longer think of as home, had been fun despite the Mets losing to the Atlanta Brats 4 – 0 at Citi Field (aka “Two-Shea” to us purists). I stayed with my best friend of 52 years (since the 7th grade) and his family, visited with my sister, and my nephew and his family, and gained at least five pounds in five days. (more)

Russia announced a 12-month extension of its grain export ban on Thursday, raising fears about a return to the food shortages and riots of 2007-08 which spread through developing countries dependent on imports. (more)

The Russian government recently sent Prime Minister Vladimir Putin off to the Far Eastern coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula to “cultivate the image of a macho leader” (as the Moscow Times puts it). I guess being macho in Russia means shooting whales, because that is precisely what Putin did.
Imagine the cries from Greenpeace! But wait, the Russian prime minister actually “shot” a wandering gray whale (after three attempts) to collect skin samples for science. Imagine the cries from Greenpeace anyway. (more)