Last week actually, but still top of the charts:
DER SPIEGEL: Mr President, former Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
called you a ‘pure democrat’. Do you consider yourself such?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: (laughs) Am I a ‘pure democrat’? Of course I am,
absolutely. But do you know what the problem is? Not even a problem but
a real tragedy? The problem is that I’m all alone, the only one of my
kind in the whole wide world. Just look at what’s happening in North
America, it’s simply awful: torture, homeless people, Guantanamo, people
detained without trial and investigation. Just look at what’s happening
in Europe: harsh treatment of demonstrators, rubber bullets and tear gas
used first in one capital then in another, demonstrators killed on the
streets. That’s not even to mention the post-Soviet area. Only the guys
in Ukraine still gave hope, but they’ve completely discredited
themselves now and things are moving towards total tyranny there;
complete violation of the Constitution and the law and so on. There is
no one to talk to since Mahatma Gandhi died.
