Posted by
Always To The Right on Saturday, October 11, 2008 2:37:29 PM
Somehow, I doubt that Russia’s latest diplomatic project
will gain much traction with its closest European neighbors, but it
does at least expose the Russians as something other than allies to the
US. Dmitry Medvedev has called on France and other European nations to
form an anti-American front. Nicolas Sarkozy declined direct comment
Small wonder. Vladimir Putin has tried strongarming former Soviet
republics into falling back into Moscow’s satellite system. He
attempted to interfere with elections in Ukraine, with some convinced
that the Russians were behind the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko,
who then launched the Orange Revolution and pushed the pro-Moscow
Viktor Yanukovych out of power. The UK believes that the Russians
assassinated former KGB agent and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko,
which Litvinenko himself said
before he died of radiation poisoning from a dose of polonium. The
attack on Georgia only escalated Putin’s return to empire-building.