> I don't see why it is so flamewar-ish Because there's always (at least) two sides to each coin. Putin might be a czar, but Russia under his rule restored mu

> I don't see why it is so flamewar-ish Because there's always (at least) two sides to each coin. Putin might be a czar, but Russia under his rule restored much of its superpower status that was lost in the Soviet Union collapse. His exploitation of Russia's position of nearly monopolist resource exporter in the region is very clever, and it put a lot of smaller countries in Europe (Finland included) under substantial influence of Russia. Understandably this doesn't sit well with some other countries, and it's in their best interest to undermine Putin's order and to support and agitate the social unrest in Russia. So one may argue that the "revolution" is being stirred as much from the outside as from the inside. In fact, there's an alleged proof floating around (in a form of fiscal email exchanges between "independent non-profit pro-democracy" Russian media and social outlets and their US sponsors). That's not to say that the proof is real. It only means that there's a full-on media war on, and theatlantic.com might be representing just one side of it. Now, do tell me this is not flamewar-ish :)