it's important to recognize the difference in russia from the pre-putin days to now. back in the 1990's after the collapse of the soviet union, for example, silver standard essentially had its lunnoe project stolen. those were the days of gangster capitalism, when no one paid their taxes, and a handful of billionaires ran the country.

enter putin, a strongman, former head of the kgb and a judo champion. that is what the russian people wanted. but he's not just a thug; he is a clever politician who recognized the anger of the people toward the oligarchs, and campaigned to reform the government.

after he was elected in 2000, he summoned the oligarchs to his office, and told them they could keep their wealth if they did the following - 1) pay their taxes, 2) stay out of politics, and 3) comply with any favors the state may ask. that could mean buying priceless russian paintings, or faberge eggs when they come up for auction, and repatriating them, or building a sports training facility so the russians could do better at the next olympics.

those may seem like intrusions by government to us, but they were actually very reasonable demands, given the vast wealth involved, and most of the oligarchs understood that. however, a couple of them either didn't get the message, or may have thought they had some special sense of entitlement because they were billionaires.

an oil baron tried to do an end run around the state bureaucracy and cut his own deal with foreign countries. he not only lost his oil company, but he is now serving a lengthy prison term. even worse, a media mogul used his television station to criticize putin's handling of the kursk disaster, the submarine that blew up and sank. (what was he thinking?) fortunately, he realized his error in judgment in time, and fled to england, where he has survived several assassination attempts (so far.) since then, the other oligarchs have behaved themselves.

those transgressions may seem small by western standards, but putin had given them fair warning, and they defied him anyway. i certainly do not endorse putin's methods, but the point is that if you play by the rules, you don't get hurt. if you don't play by the rules, you may end up in a siberian labor camp, or worse. the result is that putin has an 85% approval rating, which any other politician can only dream about.

russia is not the soviet union, and the wild west days of the 90's are over. there is still a lot of geopolitical gamesmanship going on, with ukraine and georgia cozying up to america, and missiles being based in poland, but those things are a long way from kupol. unless tye burt tries to overthrow the government, i don't expect kinross to have any problems.

i still hold all of my kinross paper, and i don't think we need to be concerned about operating in russia. besides, kupol is just one project out of a diversified portfolio. we took much larger risks with aurelian's assets all concentrated in one country.