In the wake of its military intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, Russia is widely disliked in Europe, the Middle East and the United States, according to a Pew Global Attitudes poll released on Wednesday. The leadership of President Vladimir V. Putininspires little confidence, the survey found.

The State Duma's Culture Committee has urged the legislature to approve a bill banning the use of foreign words in public speech in a bid to protect the status of the Russian language, a news report said.

Who would have thought that it is the hard power driven Vladimir Putin who would demonstrate to the world the use of the whole spectrum of power tools in the 21st century. He learned from his past mistakes, picked up our debate on soft/smart power, and, by the time he decided to invade Ukraine, he knew exactly how to wield the whole set of his tools.

The president will land in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday morning where he will help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the solidarity movement. He then heads to Brussels for a G7 summit on Wednesday. He’ll dine privately with French President François Hollande in Paris on Thursday and commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy on Friday — all while Russian President Vladimir Putin is nearby.

As the last of the thirty-seven participating countries weighed in (Israel, the Netherlands, Iceland, Slovenia), a dark-horse winner emerged: Conchita Wurst. A glamorous drag queen, the Austrian candidate was decked out in a long, glittering dress and sported a full beard.  “It’s a firm and clear rebuke against Putin’s anti-L.G.B.T. legislation and people who support it,” William Lee Adams, the editor-in-chief of WiwiBloggs.com, the Internet’s most-read Eurovision Web site, said. 

Vladimir Putin uses an invisible army of social media propagandists, in addition to conventional media, to support his narrative of an out-of-control Ukraine, to spread fabrications of atrocities by Ukrainian extremists, and to unleash destabilizing rumors on east Ukraine.

Putting his personal seal on the annexation of Crimea, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived in the naval port of Sevastopol on Friday, where he used the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany to assert that Moscow had the right to take over the Black Sea peninsula.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the internet as a CIA project. During a speech at a media forum in St. Petersburg, he said Russia would have to "fight for its interests" online. New laws passed in the last few days show just how serious he was.