The Chechen situation was bad enough, but the president couldn’t even handle his own people. The oil fields in Siberia were shut down, the workers out on strike, demanding they have a voice in the industry. The food stores in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad and a dozen other cities were empty while the people went hungry. Troops were openly selling their weapons and missiles to the Syrians or to the Iranians, all so they could heat their meager hovels and keep their children from freezing during the long winter.

The country was disintegrating around the pie-eyed reformers and their frail-hearted lackeys. Their beloved country had become the biggest joke of the world. Two decades before, the entire planet quaked before their military might. Even the self-obsessed United States almost spent itself into bankruptcy to defend its shores, its corrupt government trembling from the perceived threat of the Soviet Union. All the while, the people’s factories belched wholesome flame and their collectives brought forth abundant food for the tables of all its citizens, from Murmansk to Vladivostok, from the Laptev Sea to the Caspian. The map of the former empire straddled two continents, dwarfing all other countries on the globe with its magnitude.

Now they all laughed. The awesome industrial strength and once fearsome military was now rusting in the weeds while the greedy thieves in Moscow selfishly grabbed every morsel they could. In their haste to appease all the former empire’s factions, they had allowed the union to splinter, fracture, break apart into a pitiful mass of impotent rubble.

Even now the newscaster on the television in the far corner of the room was reporting that Smitrov was off in Brussels, begging NATO for another handout. Already the lily white pansy had traipsed off, hat in hand, to plead for donations from every international organization, country, or charity who would give him audience. He seemed to believe that the world was there, waiting to give them assistance out of pure human kindness, that there would be no eventual payback necessary. There would be a payback, all right. One that would bear an awful usurious interest.

Durov knew it was true. History gave too many examples: Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler. All had tried to crush the Rodina in her moments of weakness. Why would that fool Smitrov believe the modern world would be any different?

There was no doubt about it. The man and his peace-loving cronies would have to go. It was a time that called for strength, not contemptible beseeching. A time for true patriots to show the backbone necessary to save their beloved homeland from those who would give it away, piece by piece.