the shelter while i hail a cab from the roadside. I was carrying an umbrella and my hand was hooking the baby's bag, at the roadside waiting for any cabs. None stop by. All either on call or with passengers. I didn't expect this to happen....

One cab actually stops at the opposite side of the road calling out to me. I went in to shelter my mum and momo into the cab. Inside the cab, the taxi driver told me that just now he saw me waiting for cab at the roadside. At that point of time, he was with a passenger. He tells himself that after the passenger alights he will return back and see if I was still there or not. If I was still there,popular leaders in the past century according to a recent VTsIOM opinion poll (Leonid Brezhnev comes next, followed by Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yelstin the least popular). He will very likely pass the 50 per cent mark in presidential elections 4 March, despite all the protests during the past two months calling for ” Russia without Putin”. So why is he back in the ring?

It appears he was caught by surprise when the anti-Putin campaign exploded in November, fuelled by his decision to run again and the exposure of not a little fraud in the parliamentary elections in December. For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the opposition was able to unite and stage impressive rallies, one after