Robert Amsterdam

Whoever said that ruling Russia with an iron fist was all fun and games never had to consider these kinds of enormous inconveniences:

Authorities in the Chechnya region, now largely calm after Putin sent in troops to crush a separatist rebellion in 1999, on Sunday named a street in its capital after Putin. Chechnya's President Ramzan Kadyrov professes fierce loyalty to Putin.

"(Putin) has said that he does not have the right or the opportunity to put pressure on anyone, but he himself would prefer it if this did not happen," Putin's chief spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a visit to ex-Soviet Belarus.

"That goes not just for re-naming streets in his honor, but also various statues that have been there for several years, his photographs on school textbooks and so forth. On the whole, he does not support this."

My goodness, can't the people of Russia declare their love for their leader? Next thing we know, they won't even let us borrow his cult of personality even to help sell vodka. Oh, wait a minute...