Now, with the Russian elections coming up in December, Putin has cut the number of international observers that will be allowed into the country.

It’s safe to say that no one really expects this December’s Russian elections to be a fair contest. All the same, the Kremlin’s decision to cut the number of international observers invited by two thirds is a particularly brazen demonstration that Vladimir Putin has stopped trying to even appear remotely democratic.

In all fairness, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the elections won’t be fair.  That in combination with previous  actions would certainly make a person lean towards thinking we’re headed right into a Putinized Socialist Russia era. It’s not enough that the Russian election is more closed off.

Putin’s more troubling suggestion may be his proposal that OSCE permanently limit observers in seven other post-Soviet states and ban them from issuing reports until official results are published. Again, it’s not really news that Russia’s leaders feel they have the right to control political outcomes in their “near-abroad,” but they’ve rarely been so forthright about it before. Armenia’s government has already heartily endorsed the proposal.

Scared yet?  Russia’s eleven time zone election has it’s international observers cut by 2/3.  They want the same sort of thing for other ex-Soviet states.  Sounds like a good way to control the region.  Make sure to fix a few elections so that the new officials are “friends” to Russia.  A few treaties later, and we have a Ukrainian Alliance.  Or maybe they won’t hide it as well and just come right out and call it the Soviet Union again.  Either way, I think we should be worried a little less about the obvious threat in Iran and concentrate on the stealth threat in the U.S.S.R Russia.