Little boys with big toys

In present-day Russia, the politicians and oligarchs don’t seem to play nice together. The government would prefer, according to the Reuters article, to deal with foreign control than fellow Russians who pose a political threat. I’ve been paying a little bit more to this situation because one of the young Russian tycoons, Roman Abramovich, bought a team in the Premiership last Spring–he’s since spent well over US$150 million on new players for it–after seeing the writing on the Moscow wall and selling off his nearly $2 billion controlling stake in a big aluminum company. President Putin, if I might make a perhaps overly simplistic observation, seems to be having difficulty shaking off his KGB upbringing and helping his nation complete the transition to Western capitalism.