The Weekly Standard follows the money in Russia’s upcoming elections, and says it makes much more sense to ask the Kremlin to live up to its G8 commitments, rather than call for their removal from the group.

A czar, of course, never comes alone. He comes with cronies, the cronies are always hungry, and the stakes at the trough could not be higher. The redistribution of property that followed Putin’s ascent ran into the tens of billions of dollars. The very long list includes Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s oil company, Yukos, nationalized in a hostile takeover; Vladimir Gusinsky’s media empire, snapped up by a state-run company; Roman Abramovich’s oil company, Sibneft, nationalized in a friendly takeover (with full payment to the owner); leading titanium manufacturer VSMPO-Avisma, swallowed by the state-run arms exporter; and, more recently, Mikhail Gutseriev’s oil company, Russneft, currently under acquisition by Kremlin-friendly oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who has publicly promised to surrender it to the state if the Kremlin so much as asks. …