Barroso holding hands with a dictator

EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso is full of praise for his host Vladimir Putin, who invited him - and a number of other EU grandees - to Yekaterinburg,  the city where members of the bolshevik secret police - precursors of Putin's KGB -  murdered Tsar Nicholas II and his family in 1918: 

I have said in the past that a strategic partnership like ours needs to be based on strategic trust. These Summits serve precisely to build that trust.

That is why I want to conclude by thanking once again President Putin for having brought us to this great city. Yekaterinburg is not anymore just a frontier. It is today a place where we stretch to hold hands and join efforts for the sake of a better future for our citizens.

Holding hands with corrupt dictators has, of course, never been a problem for the former maoist Barroso, or for that matter for his presidential rival, haiku poet Herman Van Rompuy:

(It is not difficult to understand, why this photo has been deleted from the EU Commission photo service for media.)