Binoy Kampamark,

Thanks for reminding us that Mother Russia is still alive.

The Australian Media seem to have forgotten its existence.

We know the school in which Mr. Putin has been formed, the company he has kept and the theatre in which he has operated up to now.

What Peter Pomerantsev writes 'In contemporary Russia, unlike the old USSR or present-day North Korea, the stage is constantly changing: the country is a dictatorship in the morning, a democracy at lunch, an oligarchy by suppertime, while backstage, oil companies are expropriated, journalists killed, billions siphoned away.' is a plausible scenario, given that the place is under the duopoly Putin- Medvedev.

Beside the inexplicable power game between the two there is an equally puzzling question: where are the siphoned billions stored?