| Summary of the events to date. |
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...on Wednesday ordered state-of-the art air defence missile systems to be deployed at a Russian air base in Syria following the downing of one of its warplanes by
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
, a move that raised the threat of a military confrontation between the NATO