Here’s my piece at Telegraph Blogs this morning on the Russian Presidential elections:

One reason why Zyuganov is doomed never to win an election in Russia lies in the country’s problematic demographics. Thanks in part to Putin’s policies, the gap between the number of Russians being born every month and the number dying every month has dwindled significantly, although each year there are still more departing than arriving. Most Communist supporters in Russia are elderly people, and every month approximately 160,000 of them die. It’s not easy to build a successful political movement on that model…

And on Russia’s forthcoming foreign policy:

What is frustrating about Putin’s view is that it ends up defending the indefensible, siding with trashy, clueless regimes that violently cling to power long beyond any reasonable limit. Yes, "dialogue" is better than civil war. But dialogue which in fact is aimed at helping keep these dismal leaders in control is not worth having.

Putin himself has his powerful new job because Western governments weighed in to help Russia’s own democratic forces bring Soviet communism to an abrupt end in Russia. Russia Communists had 70 years to bring about dialogue with decent Russian citizens. There comes a point when dialogue is part of the problem, not part of the solution…

Let’s hear it for reader Mitcheltj who writes:

Excellent post CC.  Easily the best piece I have read about the Russian elections.  Thank  you.

But then there’s grumpy russian:

Sorry, but I haven’t read such an outright idiocy anywhere among the DT blogs

All such articles cover huge themes and so the generalisations needed to write anything at all either please or enrage people.

*sobs*