There is no disguising the bitterness and consuming envy that Russia feels toward the United States.

Putin is a KGB Soviet-nostalgic nationalist. He mourns the fall of the Soviet Union as the worst event of the 21th century. Russia was humiliated in the 1990s and the U.S. stood - and still stands and forever more - at the world’s undisputed hegemony.

This enviousness comes out in snide attacks against the United States. As when Putin stated that the current economic crisis meant that the United States would never be the global finance leader again.

It is not hard to understand Putin’s pathetic quips. The United States is the world’s economic giant with a GDP 14x that of Russia, Russia is losing 700,000 people a year while the United States is the #1 destination of all those seeking to emigrate from the “best and the brightest” to the common man seeking even minimal betterment, the Russian navy is in shambles with a Russian submarine involved in another accident this year and the Western world recently mocking a Russian navy vassal incursion to Latin American by simply noting that if they made the trip than they have a vassal than can go far, and the U.S., well, ...

And on and on. That angry breed of envy will become sharper in the coming years as Russia suffers during the global recession, which it blames on America.

Russia’s economy is a facade entirely built up on high oil and natural gas prices. But at the price of oil keeps going down, Russia has been humbled. It knows it can no longer go bullying around and must use all its resources and attention to stabilizing the regime lest the KGB oligarchy running the Kremlin loses public favor.

We can expect more nationalist rhetoric meant to distract Russian masses from the misery their leaders have inflicted as exhibited by the words of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to a Russian television station: “Russia’s interests must be secured by all means available, this is my deep conviction. First of all, by international and legal tools ... but, when necessary, by using an element of force.

“Today I do indeed feel an attempt to ‘put Russia in its place’. And if, sometime ago, when Russia was in a quite different situation, such attempts could still yield some results, in today’s situation .... this is simply inadmissible.”

Usually world leaders tend to not blatantly engage in provocative words that state the willingness of a power to engage in war. But desperate leaders are always looking for outside bogeymen to scare their people in line behind the regime. The West fulfills that job for Russia’s nationalistic leaders.