A few years back, in one of his finest moments, Senator John McCain said on a Sunday talk show that "Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country." It was right when he said it, and it's even more right today.

Vladimir Putin's circle of corrupt oligarchs gouge whatever money they can from the impoverished Russian economy and move it to bank accounts overseas. And they do this after giving Putin his cut, after which he apparently also sends the money overseas.

Many say Putin is the richest man in Russia, worth billions and billions. So the old Soviet model of the nomenklatura communist bureaucrats getting rich while the rest of the country declines is still in place.

But with energy prices falling...

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