Quote Originally Posted by Gilrandir View Post
I have answered this one, yet I can do it again: some countries (Turkey, Israel) are perfectly well having free trade agreements both with the EU and Russia. Even Yanukovych in summer of 2013 said that he would like to see the same future for Ukraine. Russia thought (and still thinks) that it should be a matter of choice - either the former or the latter.
Anyway, the way Putin enforces friendship is unlikely to get him friends.
He wasn't making a lot of friends before that either, but since when were Turkey and Israel historically friends of Russia? Their free trade agreements have nothing to do with the situation in Ukraine.

Quote Originally Posted by Gilrandir View Post
You evidently have no experience of living in the USSR and modern Russia which increasingly reminds the former. Ask GenosseGeneral, for example, what a modern Russian is likely to say when he is asked by an unknown person on the telephone about his attitude to Putin. Of course, there are some (or very many) that genuinely support him (see the video on celebration Putin's birthday in Grozny), but I would say that a considerable portion would just freak out and say that they worshipped their leader. So the 85-88% figure that Russian media boast of is in fact bloated out of proportion. The real figure (though great in fact, I'm sure) is far less.
Of course not, I was born in the Free World™.
But that seems to be a general problem with polling outside the free world, nothing very special about using a telephone to do so, so I was surprised that you highlighted the world telephone. Or would people answer differently if a random guy asked them on the street?