He has thrown a gauntlet. However, only few countries of the former Soviet Union took advantage of perestroika. We abandoned the arms race. We began to open up, rebuild our ideology and our country. However, the West, Europe, the United States of America and NATO countries were still the same. Gorbachev, like a child, believed them. He announced perestroika. And he was deceived. Yeltsin is also great, because every nation deserves its leader, its president. Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin appeared exactly at the right time and place. Gorbachev destroyed the Soviet Union and its ideology. The borders were opened. But he did what no one asked for: he gave the KGB archives to the Americans and disclosed our agent network. Yeltsin continued this destructive line: “take as much sovereignty as they could swallow.”  Then Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin appeared. He masterfully reformatted the system without much administrative experience as a background. After all, he did not come to power as a heavyweight, although he had been a great manager. He managed to make people believe in themselves and in their future, to declare that the world should not be unipolar and to restore Russian self-consciousness. He did it all despite the trillions of dollars that our Western “partners” managed to squeeze out of from Gorbachev’s perestroika and use them for further ruining Russia.

... When the “Kalmyk tiger” met with the Dalai Lama, he saw a Time magazine on his table with a question on the cover: Who is Mr Putin? And the most important person in Tibet, naturally, asked his visitor who is Putin. With Asian slyness, the Kalmyk said, it was the Dalai Lama who had promoted the Russian president. The Nobel Peace Prize winner could not hide his amazement. And then Kirsan reminded the high interlocutor of how he had received the a meaningful gift several years before. Here is how it was. Before visiting the Dalai Lama, Ilyumzhinov met with the then head of the FSB Putin in Ilyumzhinov‘s Moscow office. Kirsan explained the reason of the meeting as to “enjoy delicious mutton.” Incidentally, his guest mentioned that his wife Lyudmila is passionate about Buddhism. Well, Kirsan asked the Dalai Lama to present a souvenir for her. The Dalai Lama asked who the receiver of the present was. The guest was reluctant to mention the actual name and so he answered: "It’s the wife of a friend." The Dalai Lama agreed. And he presented a white Tibetan scarf Khata – symbolizing the purity and openness of the path (tashi delek) – for Putin. Kirsan Nikolayevich delivered the gift to the addressees and has since been ironic: the Dalai Lama, unaware of this, blessed the way of FSB head to the presidential Olympus.

Evgeniy Dodolev