The unrest sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa has finally begun to reverberate in Russia. At a security meeting in North Ossetia yesterday, President Dmitri Medvedev warned that these uprisings could trigger the disintegration of Arab countries "into little pieces" and "bring fanatics to power." Such comments were clearly designed to tap into age-old Russian fears of territorial break-up and Islamification, which suggests that the Kremlin is worried that its corrupt, autocratic rule could soon face the tidal wave of people power.  If that does indeed happen, Vladimir Putin and his cohort had better hope that their ten-year-old habit of trotting out bogeyman and engaging in empty PR continues to pacify dissent. Otherwise, it could be another long, hot summer in Moscow.