Our Vladimir Putin is a brave guy—except not really.
Yesterday, his courage was enough to deliver an angry rebuke to the “bearded little faces of liberal politicians.” But when it came to answering a question about Transneft, apparently not. His youthful swagger ran out. Although Transneft (according to the data sent to me) accounted for 5 to 10% of all questions submitted online. What does that tell us? We’re right, and Putin has nothing to say in response. Some of the money that was siphoned off was, and still is, going somewhere very important. The investigation into the “ESPO case” (Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil pipeline) will run into very serious obstacles. (I know that here I’m stating the obvious—Captain Obvious style.) And yes, my dears, I hasten to inform you that this post was written not in New Haven, Connecticut, but in the Maryino district of Moscow. Yesterday, after successfully surviving the HELL of a delayed flight, baggage, whining children, and Pepsi spilled all over the airplane seats, my whole family returned home. We even managed to sit in a traffic jam of truly epic proportions. The trip from New York to Moscow is still longer than the trip from Sheremetyevo Airport to Maryino, but the times are now comparable. P.S. For dinner I ate a whole loaf of black bread, the lack of which in ’Merica had already started giving me something like withdrawal symptoms.