Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is known for loving both cute things and adrenaline, so it's no surprise that he has taken to movie star Leonardo DiCaprio like a puppy to a new chew-toy. DiCaprio landed in St. Petersburg earlier this week to attend a tiger-conservation conference, but his journey to Russia was rife with excitement. His first Russia-bound plane was forced to make an emergency landing in New York after an engine failure. His second plane had to stop in Finland for unscheduled refueling because of strong headwinds.

According to the Telegraph, Putin spotted DiCaprio in the audience and deviated from his set speech to praise DiCaprio as a "real man" noting that "a person with less stable nerves could have decided against coming, could have read it as a sign - that it was not worth going."

DiCaprio apparently was also feeling the love, telling Putin about his Russian heritage. (A Russian film producer, noting Leo's uncanny resemblence to Vladimir Lenin, is reportedly looking to cast the Inception star as a re-animated version of the Soviet revolutionary in an upcoming sci-fi film.)

With all this love in the air, the tigers were not left out. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the International Tiger Conservation Forum ended with the approval of the Global Tiger Recovery Program, which aims to double the number of tigers in the wild. DiCaprio personally donated $1 million for tiger conservation (which should also make Malia
Obama happy).

Of course, Putin's feelings about tigers are already well-known.

Russia is one of 13 countries where tigers still exist in the wild, along with Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam.

An unnamed Russian official has told Russia's generally reputable Kommersant newspaper that an assassin has been dispatched to dispense some Soviet-style justice against a former SVR colonel identified only as Shcherbakov, who allegedly controlled the ring of sleeper agents arrested in the United States last June and fled Russia just days before they were arrested: 

"You can have no doubt -- a Mercader has already been sent after him."

Ramón Mercader was the KGB-hired Spanish communist who was sent to kill Leon Trotsky with an ice pick in Mexico in 1940. [...]

"The fate of such a person is unenviable. All his life he will drag this with him, living every day in fear of retribution."

So for blowing Russia's inside source on the Montclair Parent-Teacher Association, this guy gets elevated to the level of Leon Trotsky?

It's true that the arrest of "the illegals" can be seen as a sign of the return to KGB-era espionage tactics after a period during which the SVR tried unsuccessfully to distance itself from its past. And the involvement of Russian intelligence has been suspected in a number of other assassinations, notably former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed by polonium poisoning in London in 2006. 

But telegraphing an assassination plan in advance is going to make plausible deniability a bit tough if something happens to Shcherbakov in the near future. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was a bit subtler back in July, saying, "The special services live under their own laws, and everyone knows what these laws are" and "Traitors always end badly. As a rule, they end up in the gutter as drunks or drug addicts."

Vladimir Putin's trip to Kiev this week to sign a series of trade deals with an increasingly Russia-friendly Ukrainian government should have been a feel-good moment for the Russian prime minister, but all anyone wants to talk about is the mysterious bruise on the side of his face:

Putin's aides denied anything was wrong, but the leader's appearance caused intense speculation in local media and blogs. Ukrainian television channel TSN said the Kremlin chief had "noticeable swelling" on his face and was "covered in make-up."

Andrei Kolesnikov, a well-known correspondent with Russia's Kommersant newspaper, confirmed the president's unusual aspect. "Could it really be the result of some tough sparring?" he asked, saying the bruise was "thoroughly retouched but nonetheless noticeable to everyone without exception".

The Kremlin is not-very-convincingly blaming jet lag and light falling on his face in an "unfortunate manner." The Ukrainian media is reporting that the normally talkative Putin was "sad and silent" during a meeting with his Ukrainian counterparts and left early, canceling a planned dinner. According to the BBC, the bruise seems to have appeared between Tuesday and Wednesday.

Not waiting before launching into speculation, Ukrainian papers suggest Putin either "had plastic surgery, underwent a complicated dental procedure that left his face puffy or had an unfortunate judo fight." As the Guardian notes, Putin's habit of cuddling with dangerous wildlife can also put one at risk of injury. In any event, Vladimir Vladimirovich himself doesn't seem likely to comment.

Everybody's (or at least the New York Post's) favorite glamorous Russian spy has resurfaced, putting in an appearance at the launch of a Russian soyuz rocket, bound for the International Space Station:

Dressed in a scarlet peacoat, she was spotted in front of the astronauts' hotel in Baikonur before the lift-off as they boarded a bus to go to the launch. She was swiftly led away by a guard after being recognised by journalists....

Since her arrival back in Moscow she has posed in cocktail dresses for a weekly magazine and appeared at a party at a nightclub, but has not given any interviews about her experience.

Russian media reports said she has been working as an advisor for a bank that is involved in the Russian space programme but officials at Russia's space agency Roskosmos were quick to deny it was involved in her visit.

"Roskosmos has nothing to do with Anna Chapman's visit. As far as we know, she came here as a private individual on the invitation of an executive of a commercial bank," a Roskosmos official said.

Looking forward to where Chapman's fame will take her. Of course, this could only happen in Russia. No U.S. spy whose cover was blown would ever run around like some kind of reality-show star trading on their newfound celebrity. Oh wait.  

With the likely withdrawal Saturday of the Palestinians from their ill-advised direct talks with Israel, it looks increasingly like Barack Obama's foreign policy is headed for catastrophic failure.

Nearly across the board, the president's initiatives are going down in flames. Nowhere is this more true than in Pakistan where, Jane Perlez reported Wednesday, the civilian government in which the U.S. has invested billions is perilously close to collapse -- if not facing a military coup.

Now comes word that Pakistan is cutting off NATO's supply lines into Afghanistan in retaliation for U.S. helicopter strikes in Pakistani territory -- strikes made necessary because the Pakistani military can't, or won't, crack down on militants unless they threaten the Pakistani state directly.

As for the war in Afghanistan, it's going very badly.

Further east, the United States seems headed for a disastrous currency war with China, although Beijing's recent diplomatic blunders have sent Asian countries running into Uncle Sam's loving arms.

To the west, Iraq still has yet to form a government after seven months of post-election deadlock, and attacks on the Green Zone are metastasizing in a frightening way.

One rare bright spot is Russia where, despite the complaints of Cold Warriors and human rights campaigners, relations are at their highest point since the Yeltsin era. But much of the good work Obama's team has done could easily unravel, especially if the Senate deep-sixes the new nuke treaty.

As for Iran, it's a mixed bag. Obama has kept Europe on board with tough sanctions, and brought along a few other players. But China is likely to undercut those efforts and relieve the economic pressure, leaving the United States and Israel with few options for stopping Iran's nuclear drive. Meanwhile, the drums of war are beginning to beat in Congress.

Of course, if Obama really wants to make a hash of the world, I can think of no better way than to start launch airstrikes on Iran. But I doubt he's going to do that.

A top-ranking Russian official recently confirmed his nation's intention to go ahead with the sale of some particularly lethal cruise missiles to Syria. Israel, not-so-surprisingly, is not-so-happy. The supersonic Russian Yakhont missiles have a range of 138 miles, according to the BBC, and could target Israeli warships in the Mediterranean.

Syria and Russia signed the missile agreement in 2007, but Russia is yet to deliver the goods.

The Israelis have been working for some time to dissuade the Russians on fulfilling their contract, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoning his Russian counterpart, Vladir Putin, last month to try and convince him to renege on the agreement.

Of course, the Russians are quite notorious for this kind of behavior; back in 2005 they signed a contract for the supply of the S-300 missile defense system to Iran -- a powerful anti-aircraft system which poses serious threats to modern aircraft, including Israel's own air force. December will mark five years of the Russians dragging their feet on the deal, offering conflicting statements on the status of the system throughout the process.

In the meantime, Russia has been reaping the benefits of the situation, purchasing advanced Israeli drones this spring -- their first military purchase from Israel. More recently, Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, travelled to Moscow to meet with Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, where he signed a quite promising military cooperation deal.

Lesson for the day? You could be getting those missiles soon Syria -- but don't get your hopes up, the Russians know how to milk you for the ride.

Then again, they may be learning from the best.

The New York office director of UNAIDS, Bertil Lindblad, is worried about the one region of the world where HIV infections are increasing, even as rates in the rest of the world level off. It's not in Africa or Asia, or even Latin America. It's Eastern Europe -- countries like Russia and Ukraine -- where a recent UNICEF report notes that increases in infection rates of as high as 700 percent have been seen since 2006.

"There is an urgent need for the whole Eastern European and Central Asian region to act quickly," Lindblad said this morning. "This is really quite scary given the fact that there is denial, and so much stigma and homophobia [in that region.] This could really create huge problems if HIV continues to spread from smaller groups in the population to wider."

It's HIV/AIDS's silent crisis, one that has been underway for the last decade. The region is home to a quarter of all injection drug users in the world (3.7 million), and this is where the epidemic is believed to have begun. These users are young -- most of them teenagers. But from there, HIV spread to sex workers (the majority of whom are also under 30), and now has fully moved into the everday lives of men and women in the region, married and unmarried. A mark of the epidemics progression -- from specific populations into the majority -- is the new incidence of HIV among women, who account for 40 percent of all new infections (that's up from only 24 percent at the turn of the century.)

The stigma attached to the disease -- and more importantly, to the groups of people percieved to be the majority infected with it -- is the biggest obstacle to doing anything about the disease. "Those living with HIV have been silenced and excluded, and risky behaviours borne of futility and hopelessness have been sanctioned or repressed," the UNICEF report notes. Government officials are said to be resistant to admitting the scale of the problem, and today that country remains a difficult places for AIDS advocacy, says Lindblad, who formerly worked in the UNAIDS office in Moscow.

But where there is challenge such as this, there is also often opportunity. Russia, I would think, should have a very serious interest in addressing this crisis. For starters, because AIDS threatens to exacerbate its larger demographic problem -- that of a fast-shrinking population. But the other point might be even more convincing: The injection drug users are using heroin. And that heroin comes from Afghan poppies. For Russia, tackling the illegal drug market in Afghanistan -- one which fuels the insurgency -- is a serious national security issue.

Of course, good old fashioned peer pressure might help edge them along as well. And when the U.N. General Assembly meets later this month, one of the side conversations, according to Lindblad, will be a discussion on HIV/AIDS "co-hosted by the government of China, the government of Nigeria, and UNAIDS," specifically, the Chinese premier and the Nigerian president (South Africa's President Jacob Zuma was also supposed to come, but had to cancel.) "That could influence other big countries such as Russia, for example, to turn around."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's getting a lot of ink tonight for hinting -- yet again -- that he'll make a bid for the presidency in 2012. Citing the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt's four terms as a model, Putin said there would be nothing illegal about running for a third presidential term after Dmitry Medvedev's term expires -- though he didn't say he wanted the job. (Last week Putin said he was "bored" by foreign policy, which falls under the president's formal authority.)

But that wasn't the most interesting thing Putin said Monday, speaking before a crowd of Russian and Western policy wonks in the resort town of Sochi. He used the occassion to issue a rare shoutout to Barack Obama,  calling the U.S. president a "deep, profound person" and saying the two men had "similar perspective on global problems."

"Probably this is the best prerequisite for a higher level of relationship with the United States," he added.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, that's a far cry from last year, when Putin reportedly harangued Obama during an unpleasant "working breakfast" in Moscow.

In an inspired bit of YouTube surfing, Gawker has assembled a compilation of military recruitment commercials from around the world. There are a few clunkers -- three minutes is an awful long time to watch a Russian paratrooper sort of rapping in front of an obstacle course -- and I have my doubts that this Japanese ad is not an elaborate sophomoric hoax, but on the whole they make for pretty fascinating viewing.

Watching these as an American, the most immediately noticeable thing is how little time most of the ads spend overtly appealing to patriotism. There's Estonia, which does it cheekily, and Lebanon, which does it with a slow-motion sentimentality that would be cloying under other circumstances but is actually quite poignant in the context of a country that is eternally trying to keep things together. France and India, meanwhile, both hearken back to the U.S. military ads of the pre-9/11 era, in which we mostly see the life-advancing stuff that enlistment is supposed to get you, with a minimum of actual warfighting. (A career in the Indian army evidently prepares you for a lifetime of golfing and competitive diving.)

The Ukrainian army opts for an admirably straightforward "you'll get girls" approach. Singapore features a naval vessel transforming into a giant robot, presumably developed to contain the same giant lava monsters that have long plagued the U.S. Marines. Britain's jarring entry -- which a student of post-colonialism would have a field day with -- looks like it was directed by Fernando Meirelles. (This kind of "I dare you" approach to recruiting must work in the U.K. -- back in the '90s, when the U.S. Army was mostly promoting itself as a way to pay for college, the Brits ran magazine ads showing a Royal Marine eating worms as part of a survival training course.)

But the real winner here, I think, is Sweden, which is promoting military service to young women as a means of avoiding working as an au pair for awful Americans:

Criticisms leveled against Moscow's response to the raging wildfires are now obsolete. While Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov was roundly berated for grudgingly returning from his European vacation to deal with the fires, Vladimir Putin himself co-piloted a plane over burning forests, releasing 24 tons of water on a blaze -- all without any formal pilot training.

Putin, wearing a blue shirt and jeans, boarded a Russian-built Be-200 amphibious aircraft as a passenger for a flight over the Ryazan region.

 

But he later went into the cockpit and sat in the co-pilot's seat, holding the throttle and pushing a button to dump 24 tons of water on forest fires about 200 kilometers southeast of Moscow.

 

Footage on Channel One television showed Putin hitting the button and asking the pilot, "Was that OK?"

 

The pilot replied, "A direct hit!"

After the spectacularly managed photo-op, reminiscent of a similar adventure by the second Bush, Putin visited a village where he pledged aid: Families would be compensated in cash or have their houses re-built, but at a maximum of $66,600, or 2 million rubles.

Russians have long since thought of ways to cope with the frigid cold (think over-buttered bread and over-flowing shot glasses), but weathering the blistering heat is a newer challenge. Record temperatures across the country -- in the low nineties! -- might make Washingtonians trapped inside the beltway scoff, but for those more accustomed to donning fur coats than string bikinis, the high heat has brought out unusual (and not altogether admirable) behavior this summer.

Perhaps most alarming is the spike in drowning among summer sufferers desperate to escape the heat wave. In one July week alone, over two hundred Russians reportedly drowned -- deaths that are being chalked up to ill-advised drinking before diving. The summer-long toll would make any suburban lifeguard fall off his chair: 1,244 deaths in June, and 400 so far in July. (Moral of the story? One clear liquid at a time is best: sips of vodka or splashes of water, but never both.)

These numbers are troubling, but may not be all so surprising -- Russia typically reports five times the number of drowning deaths than the United States, regardless of thermometer readings. The real jaw-dropper of the summer made headlines last week, when a money-making project in southern Russia quickly went from cool to cruel to criminal.  The story is another case of near-drowning, but this time the victim is one you wouldn't expect to find along the beachfront: a parasailing donkey. What's now being condemned as a flagrant case of animal cruelty began as an advertizing ploy. Several businessmen launched the donkey into the air in hopes that the unusual sight would lure prospective sunbathers to their private beach. The stunt instantly attracted attention -- just not the kind the beach-owners had in mind. The donkey, not surprisingly, didn't take to his new elevation, and instantly raised complaints (what some spectators described as "screaming"). Alarmed children below added their cries to the ruckus, and concerned swimmers (or at least those with un-clouded senses) did their best to rescue the tortured animal upon its landing.

Though "no one had the brains to call police" right away, the backlash in the days that followed has been unequivocal. The story was broadcast on Russian national TV, and investigations, a precursor to criminal charges, have been launched against the offending entrepreneurs.

Some say the stunt is merely another example of widespread Russian insensitivity toward animals. Even so, the verdict is out on these misguided businessmen: just a couple of real asses.

If you're a not-so-diehard World Cup fan (read: ever since Landon Donovan dropped out of sight, you've stopped keeping track of the scores), this story ought to (re) pique your interest:

Eight percent of Russians believe their national team will win the World Cup, despite the fact that it never qualified for the tournament, an independent poll has showed.

Russian pride was shattered when its team was denied a place at the world's most-watched sporting event, currently underway in South Africa, when they were defeated by Slovenia in the qualifying stage.

The poll, conducted by Russia's Levada Center between the 18th and the 22nd of June, surveyed 1,600 Russian adults across 130 cities.

Stalin's postmortem downfall was (quite literally) on display last night in Gori, Georgia, where a statue of the Soviet leader was dismantled from its decades-old perch in the square of Uncle Joe's hometown. The unceremonious removal -- conducted without announcement or fanfare in the dead of night -- sounded strangely reminiscent of a criminal enterprise (albeit one carried out by amateur vandals). Stalin's unexpected departure, however, came at the directive of the city's parliament, which explained its decision as a necessary product of modernization. Even President Mikheil Saakashvili weighed in to express his approval: "A memorial to Stalin," he declared in televised remarks, "has no place in the Georgia of the 21st Century."

Saakashvili's assessment isn't as cantankerous as it may sound -- in fact, Stalin-bashers in Gori are by all measures behind the curve. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, rioters across the crumbling USSR eagerly demolished all signs of the former leader (à la Baghdad in 2003), but Georgians in Gori staunchly resisted the revisionist portrait of their homegrown hero: Hundreds of locals reportedly gathered to protect the statue against its would-be defilers. Stalin's corpse was removed from its original resting place inside Red Square in 1961, just a few years after its entombment; half a century later, what's thought to be the last remaining statue of the leader in its original locale has finally come down.  

Of course, these Georgians aren't merely catching up with a trend; they plan to take their protest one step further. In a not-so-subtle gesture to their neighbors, the now-ousted statue will be replaced by a memorial for Georgian soldiers who died in the country's 2008 war with Russia.

The now-dismantled Gori Stalin made FP's list of the world's ugliest statues in April. 

Criticizing a column by Charles Krauthammer is an action roughly akin to shooting fish in a barrel, but today's offering contains a particularly egregious distortion:

On Tuesday, one day before the president touted passage of a surpassingly weak U.N. resolution and declared Iran yet more isolated, the leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran gathered at a security summit in Istanbul "in a display of regional power that appeared to be calculated to test the United States," as the New York Times put it. I would add: And calculated to demonstrate the hollowness of U.S. claims of Iranian isolation, to flaunt Iran's growing ties with Russia and quasi-alliance with Turkey, a NATO member no less. 

Growing ties with Russia? Not so fast, Chuck.

First, need I point out that Russia did, in fact, vote for the resolution in question?

Second, back in May, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ticked off the Russians when he strongly implied that Russia was becoming an enemy of the Iranian people. Here's how Reuters characterized the Russian response:

The Kremlin swiftly chastised the Iranian leader for "political demagoguery" and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday described Ahmadinejad's tirade as "emotional".

He said Iran had for years failed to respond to Moscow's efforts to resolve the dispute over nuclear work seen by the West as having military purposes, a charge Tehran denies.

This is not to say that Moscow is ready to overthrow the mullahs or simply go along with U.S. plans to put the hurt on Tehran. Russia's interests in Iran are primarily commerical, as was clear from Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's comments this week. (''We ensured the absolute protection of all the vitally important trade channels that exist between Russia and Iran ... The U.N. resolution doesn't create any barriers in this sense.'') He also indicated, however, that Iran wouldn't be allowed to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Beijing-led security group focused on Central Asia.

Ahmadinejad has an interesting personal history with Russia. Back in 1979, according to the Atlantic's Mark Bowden, he voted against occupying the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, favoring a demonstration in front of the Soviet Embassy instead. A fellow student radical later described the future president's thinking in a BBC documentary thusly: "Mr. Ahmadinejad said it will boost the Soviets’ influence -- the real threat to the revolution is Russia and the Marxists."

There is a long history of Russian interference in Iran, including one of the first crises of the Cold War -- Joseph Stalin's refusal in 1946 to end the Soviet occupation of vast swaths of the country. It was only after the massive application of pressure by then U.S. President Harry Truman that the Soviets agreed to withdraw. This history is no doubt widely remembered in Iran today, even as the regime looks for lifelines wherever it can find them.