PUBLIC MARKS with tags russia & NATO

In recent months Putin’s rhetoric against the U.S. - supported by his notion of the U.S.’s overbearing, hegemonic, influence in global affairs - has risen to a near fever pitch. Is this just good old fashioned Soviet paranoia? After all, Vladimir Putin is a product of the Soviet KGB - as an intelligence officer at the highest point of the Cold War.

As Putin’s official Presidential term of office nears its conclusion - with elections set for March of 2008 - it appears the pressures of diplomatic double-speak and the shackles of friendly innuendo have been released. President Putin took the relaxed - almost unofficial - mood of the Munich conference to lay a verbal volley of criticisms directly at the ‘hegemonic’ United States and its aspirations for ‘global domination.’