Thursday, July 23, 2009

From the horse's mouth?

Well, so to speak. After all, President Medvedev is President Prime Minister Putin's teddy bear (mishka) not his horse. On June 30 Kyiv Post had an interesting article on a speech the Russian President had given in January to an expanded session of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). He was thanking the FSB for their activity in Ukraine and Georgia aimed at preventing those two countries from joining NATO in the near future.

The issue here is not whether Ukraine or Georgia should become part of NATO but whether it should be Russia that makes that decision. By any standard of international law (in its real sense not what any UN or tranzi official might say) those are independent countries that should be making important decisions of that kind themselves.

As for NATO, it should not be dancing to the tune played by master piper Putin but conducting negotiations and making decisions about possible further enlargement according to what is right for itself and its members.

Read the whole article. It gives an interesting historical background of the way Russian, Soviet and then Russian authorities have played the "Jewish" card to undermine Ukrainian nationalist movements. Given the blatant anti-semitism of the late Stalinist period (something you do not hear much about) and various other parts of Russian history, this has a certain grim irony.

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