The problem with judging the winners and losers is that as an observer you have to second guess what the average voter wants - an aggressive exchange which might appeal to one viewer could prove a complete turn off for another.
Even more striking was a second victory won by Mr Akhmetov earlier this year, against Obozrevatel (Observer), an internet news site that does not even publish in English.
Although a country might, under certain circumstances, choose to rely to some extent on another country for military intelligence, this is less likely to be the case when the second country is doing its monitoring not as an ally, but as an impartial or neutral observer, as would be the status of any U.S. forces deployed on the Golan under an Israeli-Syrian agreement.
After weeks of fruitless attempts to raise the lander by radio, JPL mission controllers appeared resigned to their second major failure on a Mars mission in three months, following the September loss of the Mars Climate Observer.