JMM---reference the cold fish comments--what does one expect from a well trained KGB officer?

Never forget that this was his frame of reference for his future thinking and you saw that in his Duma speech.

It is that frame of reference that is the danger---the old glory of the SU and the superpower status that he feels Russia lost when the SU fell apart.

Check some of his comments since the breakup---then check two sentences in his speech directed towards the Germans specifically.

He said that the Germans should understand and allow Russia to reunite as a country as it was the Russians that allowed the Germans to reunite as a country.

This is an interesting point in past history that many Americans probably did not know---check what the responses were from the US/UK/France when the wall came down and the West Germans drove immediately to reunification.

The Western Allies actually drug their combined feet and found constant reasons to delay major face to face meetings and there is even some reports they wanted the Germans to go much slower---it was in fact the Russians that pushed the speed button.

NOW comes some of Putin's anger---the Russians assumed with German unification they would slowly back out of NATO and go a tad neutral and were angry that when the Allies left Berlin in 1994 they simply pulled back to their NATO bases in western Germany---the Soviet Army Germany pulled out in 1995 and went where---back to Russia and Germany stayed in NATO.

These are the small items that cropped up in his speech.

But in the end he was and still in his frame of reference a KGB officer.