Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread. I never dreamt that it would spawn so much.
By the way I see that the Russians (through Putin) appear have a lot more backing in the political West than they (Russia) enjoyed during the Cold War. That is amoung "people in the street" rather than politicians I suspect.
There seems to be a growing opinion that US will end up shooting itself in the foot as their opposition to Putin (wrongly or rightly) could hasten the move away from the US dollar as the world's currency (doing so already, I think).
I have not read all the posts, so hope I'm not just repeating too much.
