shades of weimar

Have y'all read this?

President Vladimir Putin used a campaign speech Thursday to declare the demise of the Soviet Union a "national tragedy on an enormous scale," in what appeared to be his strongest-ever lament of the collapse of the Soviet empire.

Putin, a former agent of the Soviet KGB spy agency, has praised aspects of the Soviet Union in the past but never so robustly nor in such an important political setting.

"The breakup of the Soviet Union is a national tragedy on an enormous scale," from which "only the elites and nationalists of the republics gained," Putin said in a nationally televised speech to about 300 campaign workers gathered at Moscow State University.

Creepy. I won't violate Godwin's Law yet but I'm seriously creeped out.