I think Putin plans to lead a party more powerful then the office of President and I think he will attempt to become the leader of a new Soviet Union as well. Not a communist Union but fascist.

His youth movement and popularity will give him the legs he needs.

Saw an interview on television tonight with a Dutch observer of Russia and developments in the political sphere over there are frankly worrying. It’s said that Putin may be the first to successfully continue influencing Russia even when he’s out of the Kremlin. It’s also said that the next Russian is going to be a person close to Putin and a lot of his allies are people coming from the former KGB or other intelligence services. What’s even more worrying is that a lot of these already powerful people are increasing their influence and power by marriages among their families! They control gov’t agencies and large state-owned corporations. The interviewed person noted that with the next Russian president we’re going to see a lot more tests with arms and progress in Russia’s military capablities. And, of course, the Russian state will work against the West and specifically the U.S. and continue to counteract measures proposed against countries like Iran or Syria. And they will undoubtedly increasingly put their importance as an exporter of gas and other energy sources to their own strategic advantage.

As you said, Gog is rising, and Russia meanwhile is turning fascist big time. Thanks to a former KGB communist, the spirit of the USSR lives on. Unfortunately.

Is there going to be a new cold war? It has already started. Nobody in government is going to admit it has because they are always living in denial but I see no other way to describe the actions of Russia and China.

Even in the cold war governments were claiming that it was over whenever it suited them but of course it was nonsense.

With all this in mind as well as the Chinese succesfull attempts at breaking into Pentagon computers, I wonder if we’re going to witness a new Cold War-like period of increasing tensions between emerging world powers and the U.S. or the West as a whole. German and French gov’t services have also been hacked into although according to the article I linked to from Le Figaro, officials are now saying the Chinese military is not to be blamed for these series of cyber attacks but as far as I know that has not been confirmed by the U.S. It’s also not the first time the Chinese have been accused of similar practices. In the first article on the subject I linked to, they wrote that the German newspaper Der Spiegel has earlier affirmed that German gov’t officials confirmed that they had been spied upon through a “trojan horse” program of the Chinese army.