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"The Sunday Times" (Great Britain): "Final word: Sing along with Putin - or else..."

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Ukrainians whose gas supplies have been cut off by their former Russian masters must be quaking to hear that, according to Vladimir Putin, "people who live in countries who are neighbours do understand each other and do hear each other better. For instance, if you take the trans-border countries of Russia and Ukraine, sometimes you cannot tell where there are more Russians or where there are more Ukrainians. The ethnicities, they are so mixed that they create a combination, a symbiosis of cultures . . ."

Ukrainians whose gas supplies have been cut off by their former Russian masters must be quaking to hear that, according to Vladimir Putin, "people who live in countries who are neighbours do understand each other and do hear each other better. For instance, if you take the trans-border countries of Russia and Ukraine, sometimes you cannot tell where there are more Russians or where there are more Ukrainians. The ethnicities, they are so mixed that they create a combination, a symbiosis of cultures . . ." The Russian prime minister was talking to our own Andrew Lloyd Webber about block voting in the Eurovision song contest. He wants Ukrainians to vote en masse for Russia's singer when the pop-horror finals take place in Moscow. Perhaps he will refuse to turn the gas taps back on until they do so. Or is this a prelude to what will be known as the Eurovision war of 2009: Russia denounces as a "provocation" the refusal of its former province to vote for the motherland and invades Ukraine to defend the historic "symbiosis of cultures"? Well, two countries once went to war over football.