'Putin's third empire'

I thought this piece on Vladimir Putin's irrepressible global ambitions was pretty accurate, and alarming. Yet another reason for good results in November, 2012. From The Guardian:

As prime minister for the past four years, Vladimir Putin never really went away. But his looming reincarnation as the all-powerful, executive president of Russia – the country's "paramount leader" in Chinese parlance – poses a stark challenge for which the US, Britain and other beleaguered western powers seem ill-prepared. As president, potentially until 2024, Putin has one overriding objective: the creation of a third, post-tsarist, post-Soviet Russian empire.

Putin famously described the collapse of the Soviet Union, the "evil empire" of Ronald Reagan's imagining, as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century". His aim, once this weekend's heavily managed parliamentary elections and next March's presidential coronation are out the way, is to put this disaster to rights. Reinstalled as president, and with his political potboy, Dmitry Medvedev, pushed aside, Putin will again exercise unchallengeable control over Russia's external affairs.