It's hate-Putin Day in the West,

Because a new, independent poll has just announced that Putin's favorable rating with his own people  in his own country stands at 85%.  You'd think congratulations would be in order, but the Anglo-American press is, instead, consumed with a bitter, transparently envious despite (to use the word in its former nominative sense of corrosive, nearly hysterical malice); not that they can say that the poll is fraudulent and its results erroneous, but their wish to say so is palpable, and it seems to hurt them that they can't.