Putin may be smiling a big come-hither smile at Greece, while snarling at the EU. Still, the time for a greater Orthodox bloc has not, and will not, comeIt is not hard to understand why the Greek prime minister’s office might have chosen the eve of Alexis Tsipras’s meetings in Berlin to remind Europe of his standing invitation to visit Moscow. Nor was it a standing invitation any more. Tsipras, it has been announced, is to visit Russia on 8 April – exactly a month before he had been expected to go to Moscow.The original plan had been for him to attach bilateral meetings to his attendance at the Kremlin’s second world war Victory Day celebrations on 8 May. Tsipras may well go to Moscow for the festivities in May – another occasion that could underline the distance between Germany and Greece, as Chancellor Angela Merkel has already said she will sit this particular jamboree out. Continue reading...