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Earlier today, diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia suffered a substantial blow, when President Obama pulled out a of planned bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in September.

As Mark reported, it is "the most dramatic effect so far on U.S.-Russian relations in the wake of Russia's decision to grant 'NSA leaker' Edward Snowden temporary asylum."

But, if you look at history, the U.S. and Russia have been here before. It goes back to 1893, when the U.S. Senate approved a controversial treaty in which both countries promised to turn over "persons guilty of attempts on the life of a ruler." That extradition treaty is now long forgotten and the U.S. and Russia have no formal agreement. When the U.S. issued an extradition request for Snowden, Russia made that clear and also complained that the U.S. hasn't been friendly when Moscow has made requests. It's complicated, and the U.S. processes hundreds — and in the early 2000s, thousands — of refugee applications from Russians a year. It grants some, rejects others.

We found three different high-profile cases in which Russia demanded an extradition that we think help explain the complexity of U.S.-Russia relations:

Ilyas Akhmadov, Chechen Rebel Leader:

In 2002, Akhmadov applied for asylum in the United States. As a 2005 Washington Post Magazine profile of him notes, the Chechen rebel leader had run out of places to hide, so he sought refuge in the U.S., where he had cultivated a network of allies, including high-ranking American officials.

The Russians deemed him a terrorist "charged with organizing terrorist training camps and leading 2,000 armed insurgents ... in the 1999 Dagestani incursion."

The Post continues:

"In response to Akhmadov's asylum application, Russia demanded his immediate extradition in 2003. Suddenly an immigration case that likely would have been resolved with one or two hearings in Boston was being kicked up to Washington, where it would languish for two years. Fortunately for Akhmadov, another benefactor, Max Kampelman, a former chief arms negotiator for Ronald Reagan and a counselor to the State Department, arranged for the white-shoe legal firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson to represent him free of charge. Douglas Baruch, a partner, landed the case. 'The evidence against [Akhmadov] was obviously fabricated, in a very slipshod and amateurish manner,' says Baruch. Leonard Shapiro, the immigration judge handling Akhmadov's hearing, apparently felt the same way, dismissing the charges for lack of evidence. (In an almost identical case in Britain, where Chechen envoy Akhmed Zakayev was accused by Russian authorities of 13 counts of murder and hostage-taking, a judge also dismissed the allegations. 'I am satisfied,' ruled British Judge Timothy Workman, 'that it is more likely than not that the motivation of the government of the Russian Federation was and is to exclude Mr. Zakayev from continuing to take part in the peace process and to discredit him as a moderate.') 'My concern,' Baruch recalls, 'was that the delay in the final decision was for political reasons, for the Bush administration not to offend the Russians.' "

Every year, the U.S. Congress appropriates more than $1 billion in military aid to Egypt. But that money never gets to Egypt. It goes to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then to a trust fund at the Treasury and, finally, out to U.S. military contractors that make the tanks and fighter jets that ultimately get sent to Egypt.

The U.S. started sending M1A1 Abrams tanks to Egypt in the late '80s. In all, the U.S. sent more than 1,000 tanks to Egypt since then — valued at some $3.9 billion — which Egypt maintains along with several thousand Soviet-era tanks.

"There's no conceivable scenario in which they'd need all those tanks short of an alien invasion," Shana Marshall of the Institute of Middle East Studies at George Washington University, told me.

A thousand tanks would be helpful for large land battles, but not for the threats facing Egypt today, such as terrorism and border security in the Sinai Peninsula, according to Robert Springborg, an expert on the Egyptian military at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. In fact, he said, at least 200 of the tanks the U.S. has sent to Egypt have never been used.

"They are crated up and then they sit in deep storage, and that's where they remain," he told me.

The story with F-16 fighter jets is similar. Since 1980, we've sent Egypt 221 fighter jets, valued at $8 billion. "Our American military advisers in Cairo have for many years been advising against further acquisitions of F-16s," Springborg said. Egypt already has more F-16s than it needs, he said.

I asked the State Department why the U.S. is giving Egypt weapons against the advice of its own military personnel. (The State Department, along with Congress, gives final approval on the weapons we send to Egypt.) Regarding those unused tanks, an official told me via email, it's not usual for a country to "maintain a portion of its equipment in reserve in the event of security contingencies." The U.S. decides which weapons to send to countries like Egypt "in consultation with our partners' own determination of their strategic and force structure requirements," the email added.

I met with a high-ranking official in the Egyptian military who confirmed that the Egyptian military does request those tanks and fighter jets because it believes they're crucial for Egypt's security. And, he said, "the U.S. wouldn't have given us weapons they didn't want us to have."

The U.S. wants Egypt to have them in part because of people like Bruce Baron, president of Baron Industries, a small business in Oxford, Mich. "The aid that we give to Egypt is coming back to the U.S. and keeping 30 of my people working," Baron told me. Specifically, he said, 30 of his 57 employees are working on parts for the M1A1 Abrams tanks that we give to Egypt.

Every March for the past few years, Baron says, he and other small-business owners have gone to Capitol Hill at the invitation of General Dynamics, a big contractor. They visit their congressmen and "let them know of our support for these programs and also the impact that these programs have on employment," he says.

Former Republican congressman Jim Kolbe often received visits from military contractors like Baron. Before he retired in 2007, Kolbe was the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that approves the military aid we give to Egypt. But when I talked to Kolbe recently, he said that "legitimate questions need to be asked of the Egyptian military."

"What is the objective of of the military these days? What do you see as the real threat?" he said.

In a perfect world, he said, the U.S. wouldn't be sending more F-16s and M1A1s to Egypt. "I think the Egyptian military needs to be doing more hard thinking about some of those things," Kolbe said. "Big toys are things that generals and military people like to have around."

But, Kolbe said, the State Department doesn't want to upset the status quo, the Defense Department doesn't want to upset a valuable ally in the region, and, of course, defense contractors want to keep their contracts.

Unlike many of the other groups, however, Heritage isn't urging people not to enroll in the exchanges. It's concentrating on getting grassroots support to get Congress to pull the plug on the law's funding.

"Right now there's a viable legislative strategy to go ahead and halt the implementation of Obamacare," Holler said. "And we want to drive that as hard and as far as we possibly can. And the town halls are an effort to do just that."

And what does the Obama administration think of all these efforts to interfere with the law's rollout? Not a lot, at least according to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

"I don't think we're going to spend a lot of time and effort trying to estimate who they may discourage from getting health insurance to provide security for themselves and their family," she told reporters on a conference call Monday. "I think it's a pretty dismal effort underway."

The administration does have backup, though. Groups like Protect Your Care will be out countering the Republican efforts, says spokesman Eddie Vale.

"When Republican members are having town halls we will have local people come to them to ask why they keep trying to take away their health care," he said. "When Heritage or Americans for Prosperity are doing their events, we will of course send people out to those."

And Vale wonders about the irony, in particular, of the FreedomWorks card burning effort.

"They're asking people literally to play with fire and burn Obamacare documents while at the same time telling these very same people that they shouldn't have health care," he said.

For the record, FreedomWorks officials caution people not to burn themselves while they're burning their cards.

Russia's immigration issues would be familiar to Americans. Millions of impoverished migrants have come and found low-wage jobs. Some are in Russia illegally and are exploited by their employers. Many are Muslims from the former Soviet republics, and a growing number of Russians fear this influx is changing the face of the country.

At 3:30 on a recent morning, the train from Dushanbe, Tajikistan, pulls into Moscow after a four-day journey. The passengers hauling their bags out onto the damp, ill-lit platform are mostly men. Russian police eye the new arrivals with suspicion.

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