Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
And as a follow on; why should anyone fight and/or die protecting a country run by crooks and liars? If this is true, then patriotism in Russia ought to be stone dead!
First, I don't think that the picture is strongly differ from any country around the world. All politicans are crooks and liars, didn't you know that? Second, Russia was run like that for centuries, patriotism has nothing to do with this, do you think that we never had some patriotic feelings?

Quote Originally Posted by chaika
Judging by how many Russian journalists have been murdered over the past few years and strangely enough few of the murderers have been found, somebody seems to take them seriously
I strongly doubt that Putin gives orders to kill some journalists. More likely the majority of those who were murdered touched some interests of some criminal bosses. And they haven't been found because our police (militia) sucks. They usually don't do nothing to catch a criminal if he wasn't caught at the crime scene.