...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. 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...'s chief front man on Friday denounced as "inadmissible" a threat by Republican White House challenger Willard
MittRomney
...former governor of Massachussetts, currently the Publican nominee for president. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney has a record as a successful businessman, heading Bain Capital, and he rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from the midst of bribery and mismanagement scandals. More to the point, he isn't President B.O...
to take a tougher line with Moscow.
"Moscow and Washington have at various levels repeatedly stressed... that it is inadmissible to have situations in which bilateral relations turn into the victim and hostage of election campaigns," Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti.
U.S. President Barack Obama
How's it going, Sunshine?...
's rival used a part of his presidential nomination address Thursday to attack the Democrats for pursuing a "reset" with Russia that rewarded it for adopting further nuclear weapons cuts.
Republican conservatives argue that the strategy has backfired because it allowed the Kremlin to crack down on its political opponents without facing much criticism from Washington for most of the past four years.
Romney also criticized Obama for abandoning part of a European missile defense shield that Russia has strongly opposed and which was promoted earlier by his Republican predecessor.