Category: Russia

Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov on Tuesday warned Georgia that any efforts to strengthen its military would be punished more severely than during the countries’ brief August war.

“We are concerned over the continuing desire of the Georgian administration to develop its military potential,” Serdyukov said through an interpreter after talks with his Turkish counterpart Vecdi Gonul.

“We believe this policy would bring about consequences more serious than those in August,” he told the AFP.

Reuters on how Russia may approach the Obama presidency:

After Barack Obama’s election win, Kremlin officials argued over whether Russian President Dmitry Medvedev should congratulate him with a warm, handwritten letter or an impersonal note, according to one analyst.

Russia’s intense dislike of U.S. policies and its resolve to stand up to them are not in doubt but the anecdote illustrates a dilemma the Kremlin is wrestling with about what tactics to use in dealing with an Obama White House.

Continue reading “Russia’s Approach to Obama”

From The Guardian:

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France joined Russia in condemning the Pentagon’s plans to install missile defence bases in central Europe yesterday and backed President Dmitri Medvedev’s previously ignored calls for a new pan-European security pact.

Both presidents concluded a Russia-EU summit, in Nice in the south of France, with an agreement to convene a major international conference next summer at which the Americans, Russians and the 27 countries of the EU should come up with a blueprint for new post-cold war “security architecture” in Europe.

“There is no trust in the Russia-U.S. relations, the trust we need,” Mr. Medvedev said, speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations, in Washington after participating in the summit meeting on the financial crisis Saturday that brought together the leaders of 20 countries. “Therefore we have great aspirations for the new administration.”

He also repeated his threat, first made the day after Mr. Obama was elected, to deploy missiles in Kaliningrad if the United States moved ahead with plans to build missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.

This from the New York Times:

As a bill extending Russia’s presidency to six years from four barreled through the Russian legislature on Friday, it fell to the old-timers from the Communist Party to put up a fight.

But the money quote comes in the second graf:

“Why do we have to do this today?”Viktor I. Ilyukhin, a Communist legislator, said during discussions Friday in the State Duma, the lower house of Parliament. “Why are we in such a hurry? A strict authoritarian regime has already been established in this country. There is already an unprecedented concentration of power in one person’s hands.”

Alexander Golts, a Russian military analyst, says that this is the first time since the cold war that Russia has declared its intention to create a military threat to the West. Whether it can be backed by real military capabilities is another question. The timing of this threat looks particularly odd: even Soviet hawks used to wait for six months after an American election to make big statements of military strategy.