...Second and fourth President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...said Thursday he cannot guarantee Syria will surrender its chemical weapons arsenal and suggested that Israel could help ensure the success of the U.S.-Russian deal by surrendering its alleged nuclear weapons.
"I don't know whether we will manage to persuade" Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Leveler of Latakia...
to go along with the plan, Putin said at the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual Russian political forum. "Up to now everything looks as if Syria completely agreed with our plan.... But I can't say whether we will manage to complete the process by 100%."
"Syria came into possession of chemical weapons as an alternative to Israel's nuclear weapons," Putin said. "The technological superiority of Israel in the region is so obvious that it doesn't require nuclear weapons, which makes [Israel] a target and creates a special problem for it.
Putin implied that the prospects for peace and chemical weapons disarmament in Syria would be bolstered if Israel gave up its own suspected cache of nuclear arms, believed to be the only such arsenal in the Middle East.
Putin insisted that Washington should bear equal responsibility with Moscow for the success of the plan to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons, and reiterated his previous insistence that Russia doesn't want to keep Assad in power by any and all means.