As the proposed July 16th summit with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki approaches, those involved in the historic meeting will find it important to pay attention to what Putin considers the foundational beliefs underlying Russia's domestic and foreign policies. Those principles are perhaps nowhere more succinctly stated than in the Russian president's speech at the unveiling of a heroic, four-meter-tall statue of Tsar Alexander III in Lavadia Palace Park, Crimea. During the ceremony, Putin gave a short speech summarizing the basis for his thinking on domestic and foreign affairs – thinking similar to that of the tsar being honored.  The location of the statue, on which is inscribed a saying attributed to Alexander III ("Russia has only two allies: the army and the navy"), is an important signal to the United States and Europe, for whom Crimea is an area causing much dispute, but an area that Putin, like Alexander III,...(Read Full Article)