The Eurozone's Greek tragedy is fast becoming Russia's big fat Greek wedding. A wedding between Russia and Europe.

No matter how this week's Eurozone negotiations work out, it is clear that Greece will never be able to repay its debts. This will hurt the Euro and threaten some of Europe's largest banks, which are holding much bad Greek paper.

While Greece is a tragedy for the West and China (which is heavily invested in Euros), it appears to be a great geopolitical and economic opportunity for Russia. I understand that Vladimir Putin has been seen drooling in his office lately.

Putin is trying to recreate his old beloved Soviet Union. Since he lacks a reliable military, he has switched methodology from guns and tanks to energy and financial power.

With Europe now overly focused on the Greek problem, Putin is making strategic political moves against his increasingly vulnerable periphery. Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania have been largely cowed. His claim that "Poland is not a real country" has made Warsaw shiver -- especially since President Obama reset U.S. relations with Russia by abandoning the missile shield. The Ukraine becomes more oriented to Russia every day.

In short, Putin is making great progress in expanding Russian influence over Eastern and Central European countries.

It is in the economic arena that Putin becomes more menacing. He already has neutralized Germany as an American ally through his control over the gas that Germany imports from Russia. He has already demonstrated this power by shutting off one of his gas lines, which caused two weeks of freezing days in Berlin. Germany's Chancellor Merkel has been cuddling up to Putin ever since.

To partially neutralize Putin's control over energy, the European nations had been working on a southern gas corridor which would skip Russian-controlled gas production and pipelines in Central and Eastern Europe. But the Greek company DEPA is a part of this corridor. Now Greece is being told that it must privatize everything it can, including DEPA.

And who is waiting with bated breath for the opportunity to buy DEPA? Russia's Gazprom. If this happens, Russia will virtually control Europe's energy needs. This problem will increase if Germany goes through with Chancellor Merkel's plan to abandon nuclear energy production.

Not content with controlling Europe through the lever of energy, Putin is looking at Europe's financial systems. He is examining the possibility of buying two big Austrian banks that have subsidiary banks throughout Central and Eastern Europe. If Austria's banks fall into Russian hands, Putin will have new financial and political leverage over all the Central and Eastern European countries which have resisted Russian financial influence in the past.

As NATO weakens and the U.S. pulls back militarily, it appears that Mr. Putin has a chance of realizing his dream -- the rebirth of the Soviet Empire.

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