полковника никто не любит

"We do have this internal feeling that you hate us. Nowadays everyone is saying to us: 'You are the bad guys of Europe. You must behave like you're a little funny kitten.' But we're not. We're a great, though ugly, bear and we don't have to behave like some funny little pet. We are who we are and you have to admit it. Sorry, guys."

Bears may be powerful creatures, but this Russian variety comes across as increasingly paranoid. It sees conspiracy everywhere.

The Russian establishment may demonise the West yet, curiously, it embraces it too. It goes shopping there, it sends its children there to study, its keeps its money there. Is this schizophrenia or hypocrisy?

So, perhaps, Russia today is neither pet kitten nor bear? She is, like her own national symbol, a double headed-eagle: with one head looking east and the other west. One pair of eyes views America and Europe as something positive. The other pair turns away from a West that it views as a threat and a useful scapegoat for Russia's problems.