Vladimir Putin, Cracking Under Pressure
Filed under: Russia
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.
Here we see neo-Soviet Russia laid shockingly bare. Putin openly declares that Ukraine is not a country, much the same way that Iran declares Israel is not. He sounds just like Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who believes that Alaska was "given away" to America and must be returned. Unable to get his way by civilized means, he immediately resorts to the tactics of the barbarian.
The hypocrisy is simply mind-blowing. For Putin, Russian territory is inviolable, but the territory of every other nation on the planet is negotiable. NATO must, quite clearly, move decisively to shore up its defenses against this madman, and it is comforting to see that it appears to be doing so.
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