[osmsiberiano]

As a Russian citizen I can only add that in the same days Putin accepted the new digital copyright law, more severe than SOPA, lobbied by media corporations, allowing domains seisure (like the 3-letter agencies do in the US), and other ridiculous measures. All in the name of movie and music corporations.

This means Putin is totally loyal to the US.

What also fascinates me is that CNN/FOX/3 other letters TV anchors speak EXACTLY like Soviet TV in '70s and '80s, making statements in place of questions:

"Julia, to start [the White House statement canceling the summit] with the Snowden factor, for the Russian statement to say, 'this is a situation which we did not create,' is of course a lie.

Welcome to the USSR :)

On the situation: punishing Snowden does not make any difference: he is already punished, and others won't dare whistleblowing. On our side, the government is involved in anti-American campaign, so they can't afford sending Snowden to the "enemy" after Manning has been sentenced that severely.

(sarcasm on) Why bother insisting on extradition? I think to an average American who saw Russia in Hollywood movies, Snowden is like in hell already.

I think our state diplomacy and propaganda could have negotiated the Russian SOPA with the US & corporations better, they should have demanded making more noise and scandal, accept Assange and somebody else. (sarcasm off)

[x0x0]

I think americans and russians both generally think the other country is more homogenous and more in control of their government than they are. To cite examples from US politics (because I'm American), we have many problems with the classic setup for democracy to fail: a few parties with concentrated benefits or costs and on the other side many parties with diffuse costs or benefits. Plus we have private financing of elections, and thus, as the joke goes, corporations have the best government money can buy.

Hopefully Snowden will be allow to stay in Russia; he'll have fun learning Russian though; it's a difficult language (source: I spent 4+mos at mgu studying russian full time.)