Speaking from a ballistic missile factory last night, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin compared the U.N. Security Council’s resolution to support military action in Libya to a medieval crusade, calling it ‘defective and flawed‘.  President Dmitry Medvedev promptly criticized Putin’s comments: ‘In no way is it acceptable to use expressions that in essence lead to a clash of civilizations, such as crusades and so forth,‘ he said.  Both leaders’ remarks were ‘aired widely on state television‘.  Putin meanwhile says that his childhood was ‘the real life of an ordinary family, and we must never forget about that‘, and has been ‘frolick[ing]‘ with a real-life snow leopard called Mongol.  According to the Kremlin, Dmitry Medvedev’s dismissal of six police generals was carried out following a series of lie-detector tests, but the direct cause of the dismissals has not been disclosed.

Speaking from a ballistic missile factory last night, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin compared the U.N. Security Council’s resolution to support military action in Libya to a medieval crusade, calling it ‘defective and flawed‘.  President Dmitry Medvedev promptly criticized Putin’s comments: ‘In no way is it acceptable to use expressions that in essence lead to a clash of civilizations, such as crusades and so forth,‘ he said.  Both leaders’ remarks were ‘aired widely on state television‘.  Putin meanwhile says that his childhood was ‘the real life of an ordinary family, and we must never forget about that‘, and has been ‘frolick[ing]‘ with a real-life snow leopard called Mongol.  According to the Kremlin, Dmitry Medvedev’s dismissal of six police generals was carried out following a series of lie-detector tests, but the direct cause of the dismissals has not been disclosed.