saw. extremely serious. thank you very much. we re going to go to moscow where cnn s senior international correspondent matthew chance has been following the u.s. russia story for us. what did putin have to say in his new year s address? reporter: basically, he congratulates the people of russia in what has been a challenging 2016. says the difficulties brought us all together, very general stuff. at the end he says we must defend truth and justice and be merciful. and that struck me as being, you know, pertinent to what vladmir putin, vlad the merciful they re calling him now. by refusing the advice of his foreign ministry and refusing to expel them in a tit for tat manner from the u.s. expulsions of the russian diplomats. he used that to his advantage dramatically, didn t he? it was an amazing bit of political theater. he took a side swipe at the