Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has told the Russian people that the protests on the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg against the vote fraud in the parliamentary elections were stirred up by the United States and that foreign countries have spent hundreds of milliions of dollars to affect the Russian vote. Something is wrong with this guy! Putin's party is the one that tried to fix the elections. We all know why: even with the fraud, the election results took away Putin's majority in the Duma (the Russian legislature). If there had been no fraud, Putin might have lost his position as Prime Minister.
Putin is playing a dangerous game by lying this way to the Russian people. If they believe him, relations with the West will be seriously damaged. If they do not believe Putin, then the legitimacy of Putin's government will suffer another body blow.
There is an old Russian proverb "Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov" which means that everything stays the same. Putin reached the heights of the Soviet Union as the head of the Soviet secret police, the KGB. Twenty years after the collapse of the USSR, Putin is still following the same playbook.
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