Mr Putin has already proven himself over the last decade as a person who helped his country become a respectable player on international stage, with its economy in a much better condition now than it had been prior Mr Putin'a appointment, a country whose citizens have much better life standard today than some 10-15 years ago. Mr Obama still has to prove himself, as we all wait to see whether he'll manage to cope with large difficulties that his country is now faced against. De-industrialized, with a morale badly damaged, with american middle class nearly extinguished, foreign policy hobbled by military lobby and Israeli lobby, banking sector sickly bailouted on a perpetual basis, his country desperately needs a strong leader to put it on a new course. Does Mr Obama possesses a character strong enough for all that (without opening some new wars, if possible)? Only after his mandate is over we will be in a position to say whether Mr Obama was a man for future, or was he a man of yesterday. Given all this, Obama's previous assessment that "Putin is a person whose one leg is still in a cold war period..." was clearly a "shot in emptiness".