A LETTER TO CBC RADIO'S SUNDAY EDITION
What a truly unbalanced piece was yours on Putin.
I'm no defender of Putin, but I am very much a defender of fairness and balanced analysis.
You had several anti-Putin voices balanced against one Putin associate who speaks poor, highly-accented English, difficult to understand and hard to sympathize with.
If Russia is such a dark place, how could you freely speak with Mr. Kasparov on the phone? Unthinkable in the Soviet Union that a government opponent could do this.
I fail to see how Putin's position in today's Russia is very much different than DeGaulle's in France. We have some democratic institutions and a very capable and much-loved, powerful figure. For decades after DeGaulle's leaving the scene, you had Gaullists as a powerful political force. No one sensible called that tyranny. It was a movement based on a charismatic figure.
Your last speaker referred lightly to Mr Berezovsky's interview in London, in which he threatened a coup, but this is a very serious matter. Try that with the government of the United States and see where it gets you.
I trust Putin is not behind the deaths of journalists, which would repulse me, but there is no factual reason for believing this now. The country is full of people with hold-over Soviet attitudes and grudges.
Russia has gone from seven decades of absolute government - with czars before that for centuries - to what we see today. The change is amazing. Genuine democracy is being built. Don't treat it so unfairly.
