Several years ago in the beginning of Putin's road to political Olympus, during one of the press conferences one western correspondent asked Putin a question: "Who are you, Mr. Putin?" This question did not lose its actuality till today.

Putin's Selectiveness for "Rule of Law".

President Putin insists that the case of YUKOS is legitimate application of the Rule of Law in Russia. That statement cannot be far from real. "Who is he kidding?" - asks ... in his article....

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, bright pro-western and the only big capitalist in nowadays Russia dedicated to transparent-type of business development with social responsibility, is arrested by masked special forces and put behind bars after charges in 1b wrongdoings with Russian oil.

At the same time former Prime Minister, Sergey Kirienko, who is in charge of disappearance of 4.8 B of IMF money given to Russia in 1998, is still enjoying the favorable relations with Kremlin.

Sergey Kirienko emerged from the obscurity to become Russian prime minister in 1998 for a very short, yet sufficient enough period to lead the country to its most notorious default.

Whether or not he can be hold fully responsible for this event, it did not add much to his political record. What he is definitely responsible for is a mysterious disappearance of $4.8 billion provided by the IMF.

Kirienko pushed for this money few days before the default. The money intended for stabilization of Russian currency could not be possibly used for that purpose any more and were never accounted for.

Kirienko became a major suspect in this mysterious disappearance of funds and became the subject of investigation by Russian and international authorities. This investigation was put on hold shortly after Putin was elected Russian president.

Soon after that he was appointed one of seven regional administrators governing important industrial region of Russia. Many enterprises of chemical and nuclear industry are located in this region and Mr. Kirienko oversees implementation of our programs there and use of our funds. The proper use of those funds can be hardly assured either by Mr. Kirienko's unfriendliness, who took openly hostile position toward U.S. policy in Iraq, or by his financial history.

Is Russia becoming a Eurasia Empire?

There are two forces in Russia today: so called "siloviki" - the one is - KGB-FSB people, MVD internal affair and other structures which are nothing in creation but are everything in destruction and repression. They are envisaging reestablishing of Russia's military geopolitical power.

The others, the western oriented non-military business forces of Russia, were united under Kremlin's Chief of Staff, Voloshin, who resigned immediately after Kremlin's attack on private business started with the arrest of Mr. Khodorkovsky.

The last events utter, that the first ones are making utmost attempts to take Russia back to the strong governmental control. Welcome back to the Russian "command economy"! Though, it could be a bit different, it could be China type. But what it could eventually lead to is the regaining by Russia a big military superpower role. The nostalgic role about which all hardliners are dreaming.

When the Russian Government gets back control of all big business, it first of all, will allow concentrating needed amount of money to redevelop its huge military complex.

It looks like the old KGB apparatus works without mistakes. First, they allowed privatization. They allowed emergence of most qualified managerial layer. They themselves pushed the people with very clearly Jewish last names to become oligarchs. The question is - why? Because now they think that the Russian "patriots" will be with them and against Jewish oligarchs and the switch to Governmental economy (with reestablishing of military potential) will be supported by masses.

When we ended Japan military expansion dreams - it was final. The same was with Nazi Germany. With USSR it appears to be quite different…………………………….