Below, in another original translation from the Russian press, we emphasize the growing revelations regarding the complicity of the Kremlin in the Moscow apartment bombings that were used as justification for Putin's war on Chechnya. We continue to be amazed at the extent to which the world in general, and the Russian people in particular, seem willing to stick their heads in the sand when confronted by the increasing horror represented by the neo-Soviet Kremlin. And yet, perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised. After all, the world in general, and Russia in particular, have a long history of ignoring serious problems, allowing them to fester until they become life-threatening, and only then taking action.

In a book review for the Weekly Standard dealing with Russia's role in World War II, editor Robert Messenger states: "In four years of terrible slaughter, the Red Army did not just defeat Hitler and National Socialism, but also put an end to Prussian militarism. It was a Soviet victory over something that had menaced Europe for two centuries. Stalin was a barbarous man, and in the end, that is what it took to finally draw the curtain on the German Way of War."

What's left unsaid is that while doing this kindly favor for the people of Germany, Stalin forgot about the people of Russia.

It was a costly gift. As Messenger writes: "The numbers are difficult to digest. The German army left 4 million men on the battlefields of Eastern Europe, but they killed 27 million. The Red Army lost 11.5 million soldiers, and 15.5 million civilians died in the territories occupied by the German army. Nearly 10 Russians died each minute that the war lasted, 14,000 each day." It took three Russian soldiers to kill one German, and more than six Russian citizens. Whole Russian cities were literally razed to the ground, including most especially the one named after Stalin himself. Reflecting on numbers like these, it's actually rather difficult to conclude that what Russians achieved in this "Great Patriotic War" was "victory." Seems a lot more like defeat.

And for what? So that today Germany could have a population that may soon exceed Russia's? So that the USSR could be tossed into the dustbin of history, and Russian men could live less than 60 years on average, working for less than $4 per hour? So that Germany could be respected the world around as a player at the international table and an economic force to be reckoned with, selling a host of products famous for their quality, while Russians are famous for re-electing a proud KGB spy to rule them?

Do Russians really love Germans that much?

The Nazi soldiers may have murdered over 15 million Russian civilians, but how many did Stalin murder in his Gulag Archipelago? The figure is likely far in excess of 15 million, and yet Stalin is being rehabilitated by the Putin regime as all the unpleasant facts of Russian history are being sanitized.

Meanwhile, the country is going right into the toilet. Just look at the appalling litany of outrage set forth in the stories we report below in just one virtual issue, from torture to fraudulent official statistics to barbaric levels of corruption to human rights atrocities in Chechnya to blatant electoral fraud. Instead of attempting to address at least one of these terminal diseases, Russians instead applaud wildly as Putin launches a new cold war with the U.S., a country that has an economy twelve times larger than Russia's and many strategic allies, where Russia has none.

Is Russia committing suicide? Is the only real unhappiness in Russia that it hasn't yet managed to carry it out?