важкі часи

Orthodox priests carry a giant Ukrainian flag in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine, on Dec. 4, 2013.

важкі часи (Hard Times), and it's not the Dickens novel I'm talking about. (For those who are wondering, that's Ukrainian, not Russian. I have a few readers in Ukraine, wanted to let them know that there are some in the West who care.)

The Russians under Putin are not really our friends.

The situation in Ukraine has me concerned. While I am most assuredly NOT a big fan of the European Union, I am less a fan of any entity run by a former colonel in the KGB* who went on to become director of the FSB**. Things there could go badly, but I pray this article is right.

The poster boy for the Wikipedia
article on the KGB.

This news story seems to have fallen under the radar for now. No doubt Sochi and the Olympics will make the Russian bear seem all cuddly and nice.

So the Russians have Putin, we have this guy -

I am not getting a warm fuzzy.

*KGB = The Committee for State Security (Russian: Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ) Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti KGB), translated in English as Committee for State Security was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 until its collapse in 1991.

** FSB = The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) (Russian: Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации (ФСБ); Federal'naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii) is the principal security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency to the USSR's Committee of State Security (KGB).