vladimir putin's greatest hits

The sudden Turkish sneak attack on Armenia which began in September using the Azerbaijani Statelet as a proxy, along with Arab militias recruited mainly in Syria, has ended for now.

Regions which Armenia had held since the 1990s have been reconquered by Azerbaijan.

The Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, at the outset geographically surrounded by Azerbaijani territory, has been heavily attrited with widespread damage to homes, infrastructure and the natural environment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has brokered the ceasefire deal which effectively copperfastens the gains made by Turkey and Azerbaijan in their smash and grab war, while deploying Russian peacekeepers to protect what's left of Armenia and the ruined enclave of Nagorno Karabakh..

I would suggest that there are grounds to believe that Mr Putin remained inactive for the first month of the conflict in order to deliberately allow the Turks to weaken Armenia and thereby to compel Armenia to come begging to Russia for intervention.

There is a suspicion in my mind that Mr Putin may have had a secret agreement with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the limits that Russia would allow for the aggression.

I am reminded of the secret agreement between Stalin and Hitler for the division of Poland in 1939.

In the same week that Mr Putin has sent his peacekeepers to Armenia, news has broken that Russia is selling nuclear reactors to Turkey.

The Muslim Brotherhood government of Turkey joins their regional rivals the Islamic Republic of Iran as beneficiaries of Mr Putin's largesse in the sale of Russian nuclear technology.

I am reminded of yet another of Stalin's secret agreeements with Hitler in the 1930s whereby the Russian communist dictator allowed his German Nazi counterpart to secretly raise German armies and to create an air force on Russian soil in order to evade the restrictions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.

Stalin believed Hitler would be a problem only for the Western World.

In the end stopping him cost many many millions of Russian lives.

Mr Putin thinks Islamism is a problem only for America, Canada, Ireland, Britain, Europe, New Zealand and Australia.

I predict that Islamist nations armed with nuclear weapons by Russia will ultimately take many many millions of Russian lives.