Who is writing for Putin these days...

And how does he still have a job?! Yeah, let's start excusing the purges again. Great plan.

RFE: Speaking to social-studies teachers in Moscow on June 21, President Putin said in reference to Soviet leader Josef Stalin's purges that "in other countries, even worse things happened," news agencies reported. "No one must be allowed to impose a feeling of guilt on us," Putin said in a televised address. "Let them think about themselves. But we must not and will not forget about the grim chapters in our history," including the purges, which reached their peak in 1937. Putin took swipes at the US, saying that its use of the atomic bomb in 1945 and defoliants and bombing campaigns in the Vietnam War were worse than what Stalin did. He also argued that Russia never produced any system as vile as "Nazism." He said he "regrets" that some Russian history textbooks are published with grants from abroad, implying that they contain distortions directed against Russian interests.