...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...'s envoy as saying on Tuesday.
Zamir Kabul
...the capital of Afghanistan. Home to continuous fighting from 1992 to 1996 between the forces of would-be strongman and Pak ISI/Jamaat-e-Islami sock puppet Gulbuddin Hekmayar and the Northern Alliance, a period which won Hek the title
Most Evil Man in the Worldand didn't do much for the reputations of the Northern Alliance guys either....
ov, Putin's special envoy for Afghanistan and a Russian foreign ministry official, was quoted as saying that Russian officials were looking into the matter now and would discuss it with their Afghan counterparts soon.
"We expect that the result with be positive," Kabulov was quoted as saying.
Moscow fears instability in Afghanistan could rise following the pullout of NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
troops and spill over into the ex-Soviet Central Asia, threatening Russia's own southern borders.