With every day that passes, it becomes more and more difficult to understand why Russians hold their “former president” Vladimir Putin [see note below for an explanation of the quotation marks] in such high esteem. On the foreign policy front, at least, Putin’s rule has been characterized by one breathtaking failure after another.

Only weeks ago, defying Putin, NATO decided to push forward with a plan to install a ballistic missile defense system in Eastern Europe, thereby mightily undercutting Russia’s ability to threaten the former Soviet regime. And in a double-whammy, NATO also firmly declared it would admit Russian neighbors Ukraine and Georgia to the NATO fold, stating that it was only a matter of time before this occurred.

Look around the world, and try to find just one major nation with which Russia has built a positive working relationship; it’s impossible. Russia’s only allies are rogue states like Venezuela and Iran and Syria, with China breathing down its Siberian neck in the East and NATO glowering in the West, led by bitterly anti-Russian new members like Estonia and Latvia.

And now, even the tiny handful of former Soviet states that Russians thought of as their “little brothers” are turning their backs on Putin as well. Over the weekend the pro-West party of Boris Tadic (shown above) delivered a stunning, brutal defeat to the reactionary, pro-Russia forces of the radical Serbian nationalist Tomislav Nikolic, outpolling them by a 25% margin in the weekend’s parliamentary elections. Spurning Russia despite the recent tumult and polarizing, paranoid rhetoric from Russia over Kosovo, Tadic boldly declared: “The citizens of Serbia have confirmed Serbia’s European path. Serbia will be in the European Union. We have promised that, and we will fulfill that.”

How is it possible that the people of Russia can fail to understand how Putin is driving the entire planet into a position of hostility towards Russia, even as he denies them their basic civil rights and liberties, just as was the case in Soviet times? How can they fail to realize that if the USSR went down to disaster, the same fate is likely to befall Russia if it acts in the same manner? Can Russians possibly believe that they are in a position to go it alone — a nation with a declining population and a $4/hour average wage, an nation that can’t even provide hot showers during the summer? Wasn’t all this failure fully predictable when Russians chose to be governed by a proud KGB spy?

Are we through the looking glass where Russia is concerned?

*NOTE: It’s necessary now to put both the word “former” and the word “president” in quotation marks when referring to Vladimir Putin. He stands accused of rigging his elections and therefore can’t be considered an properly chosen “president,” and rather than leaving government after his term as “president” ended he chose to assume the position of prime minister, vastly expanding the powers of that office. The New York Times reported that in announcing the appointment of the members of his new government, Putin “sat at the same place at a table that he used as president for these performances. Mr. Medvedev, officially the president, sat in a chair that viewers have come to regard as for subordinates.” The ministers were all Putin’s former flunkies; Medvedev will not be allowed to bring in any new faces. As the Times states: “The announcements reinforced the image that Mr. Putin will retain a grip on power and the direction of policy in Russia. Putin even kept the pen he had been given in transition by Boris Yeltsin, taking it with him to the White House rather than handing it over to Dmitri Medvedev.