re: #94 Fairly Sure I’m Still Obdicut

If he just said “the Russians”, that would be more or less understood - we also say “Americans this” and “Americans that” (though I need to look up if that has ever been used by diplomats). But “Putin and the Russians” is a double whammy, because once you’ve named Putin - who, for all intents and purposes is the personification of the Russian power structure, and then say “the Russians”, you don’t expect “the Russians” to also mean “the power structure”. Even the context would not help much after translation, and these bits aren’t really ever quoted in context anywhere.