A movie review in The New Yorker shows the horrifying similarity of behavior between Russians and Nazis during World War II. In fact, it’s easily arguable that the Nazis were not as a bad as the Russians when it came to murdering innocent people in Eastern Europe:

In the provocative cartoon above Sergei Yelkin, a/k/a “Ellustrator,” describes three blue-shaded “freeze” periods in Russian history (from left to right those of Stalin, Brezhnev and Putin) and three green-shaded “thaw” periods following them (those of Khrushchev, Gorbachev and Medvedev).  As you can see, each type of period grows smaller over time, indicating that Russia is headed towards absolute inertia at best.  One reader drew a huge amount of feedback when he commented:  ”People who live on icebergs should not rejoice in news of a thaw.”

Reuters reports: Russia’s security services have changed a lot since late Soviet days. They are much worse.

That’s the view of Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, two young Russian journalists who have just published a book on the FSB, the main present-day successor to the powerful Soviet KGB.