English: Vladimir Putin in KGB uniform Deutsch: Der junge Wladimir Putin in KGB-Uniform Français : Vladimir Poutine en uniforme du KGB (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Putin may have outfoxed Obama but his own television channel, RT makes me think that he is a lady “protesting too much”.

Russia has a military industrial complex of its own, which is promoting robotic planes, Amata tanks which are coated in stealth material, the orbiting fractional bombardment weapon, stealth fighter bombers capable of wiping the UK off the map, Iskander missiles and exoskeleton-clad troops.

India has recently taken delivery of a batch of Russian military hardware, so a lot of Putin’s rhetoric has to do with his need to earn foreign exchange from arms sales in direct competition with the “merchants of death” at British Aerospace, Thales, the PLA subsidiaries, Northrop Grumann, the “Beltway Bandits” in Washington and their counterparts in Sweden, Germany, Italy and Israel.

When the price of oil was high Vladimir Putin walked with a rolling swagger and was triumphalist, now when the price of oil is low and set to fall further he talks of the 10 lessons Russia taught Hitler during Operation Barbarossa, his late father breathing through a reed whilst watching advancing German troops just yards away and the demise of his brother.

Now Vladimir Putin sees Syria as his 21st century Stalingrad and will probably do to ISIS what he did to the Chechens when the West was fretting about the Baku oil pipeline.

A man with dreams of destiny and “Mother Russia” in his heart can be dangerous and even Vladimir Putin’s trainers at the KGB saw his propensity for violence and “edge of the seat” risk taking as something to watch carefully.

We in the West should watch carefully and be careful what we wish for because bears, when cornered, can be at their most dangerous and unpredictable, especially when they have powerful friends.

John Gelmini