First, the Russians were vowing to expel a lot of US diplomats in a tit-for-tat retaliation for the US expulsion of Russian diplomats. Now Putin has decided not to. Once again, I feel, we see the very smart world chess player making a clever move on the world board that effectively wrongfoots America, in giving him a kind of 'moral high ground', plus paving the way for having a relatively easy time (he hopes) with Trump.
Post edited at 13:18
