Beware of Greeks bearing gifts for others

After the UK realised its mistake in not joining the European Economic Community from the outset, its subsequent attempts were rebuffed by French president Charles de Gaulle, still angry after the British withdrew from the joint-gunboat action in the Suez Canal zone under US economic pressure.  De Gaulle could not possibly use this excuse so he said that Britain represented a 'Trojan Horse' for US interests that would ensnare Western Europe.  And so Britain was rebuffed by the French veto until de Gaulle left the political scene.
As Russian action intensifies in Ukraine, the fall of what remains of Donetsk airport and the severe threat to once-safe Mariupol, attempts by EU ambassadors to beef up punitive sanctions was stymied and deferred by Greece.   Syriza, the new left-wing driving force behind the elected Greek government, still has old-time respect for the Soviet Union and see Vladimir Putin as restoring the old values of the USSR.  A lot of Greeks also have affinity for their Christian Orthodox cousins in Russia, like when Greece abstained and criticised its allies in the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 during the Kosovo War.  This Orthodox connection is ironic given the self-proclaimed atheism of the new Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras.
It's not the first time Greeks have cosied up to foreign dictators.  During the 1930s, Greece was very familiar with Germany, Greece's largest trading partner.  Italy's foolish invasion and British intrigue drew down the brutal wrath of the Nazis who, as elsewhere, committed unspeakable atrocities that still linger in the popular memory as modern Germany seeks to impose austerity.
It has been theorised that had Mikhail Gorbachev not become Party Chairman but rather a man in the mould of Yuri Andropov - the ex-KGB boss who ruled the USSR for two years but too late, when he was a hospital invalid - the Soviet Union would have staggered on for a few more decades, increasingly impoverished and militaristic.  It is not a great leap to see Putin as Andropov's heir, seeking to restore Russian greatness but more and more the Kremlin believes its own paranoid propaganda - a dangerous development.
There will be a meeting of EU leaders in February.  It is feared that with Syriza in the ascendancy, Greece will serve as a Trojan Horse for Russia into the EU.  Picking a fight over Russian sanctions when it has bigger fish to fry could be a bargaining chip but it should also be remembered that none of the new government have never been in a position to wield political power.  Greece may have created the original Trojan Horse but it's only a trick that works once.