putin in his place
As we’ve previously reported, Vladimir Putin experienced a series of devastating defeats at the NATO summit in Romania last week.
Russia didn’t want NATO expanded. Two new countries were admitted (Albania and Croatia), and a firm promise of future admission was given to two more (Ukraine and Georgia).
Russia didn’t want defensive missiles in Eastern Europe. NATO unanimously approved their installation.
George Bush, who Putin thought was comfortably in his back pocket, delivered a blistering speech in Ukraine calling for NATO protection against Russian imperialism.
And perhaps worst of all, the NATO policy engineers structured their response so beautifully that it was impossible for Putin to get traction in a PR offensive. He had threatened to boycott the meeting if it didn’t do his bidding, but ended up being forced to attend, hat in hand.
It turns out that all this failure was just a bit too much for the malignant little troll to stand, and according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, he cracked like an egg. The paper reported:
Putin “lost his temper” at the NATO-Russia Council in Bucharest during Friday’s discussions of Ukraine’s bid to join NATO, Kommersant cited an unidentified foreign delegate to the summit as saying. “Do you understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state!” Putin told U.S. President George W. Bush at the closed meeting, the diplomat told Kommersant.
After saying most of Ukraine’s territory was “given away” by Russia, Putin said that if Ukraine joined NATO it would cease to exist as a state, the diplomat said. Putin threatened to encourage the secession of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, where anti-NATO and pro-Moscow sentiment is strong, the diplomat said, Kommersant reported.
When the price of crude comes down — and it will — Russia will once again be revealed as the Third World nation it is.