http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122350982199217341.html

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev dumped a truckload of vitriol on the United States yesterday in Evian, France (so much for the water). Mr. Medvedev said that after 9/11 the U.S. missed a chance to build a “truly democratic world order” and instead chose to “consolidate its global domination.” He urged Europe to work instead with Russia to “unite the whole Euro-Atlantic region on the basis of common rules of the game.”

Let it be noted that in the past year Russia’s stock market has lost almost 70% of its value. Insofar as his predecessor Vladimir Putin’s success rests mainly on delivering income growth to Russians, this dim moment must have struck Messrs. Putin and Medvedev as a good time to blame any financial trouble on forces outside Moscow.

In a particularly intriguing passage, Mr. Medvedev in Evian noted NATO’s plans to expand, and “quite naturally,” he said, “we regard these actions as directed against us.” Then, perhaps anticipating criticism, he said, “Sovietology, like paranoia, is a very dangerous disease, and it is a pity that part of the U.S. Administration still suffers from it.”

Some thought Mr. Medvedev would lower the volume on former President Putin’s anti-U.S. outbursts. Instead, it appears he is joining such other anti-American stalwarts as Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in concluding that international forums are mainly venues for ranting about the U.S. One wonders if somewhere in this Kremlin, Nikita Khrushchev’s famous banging shoe from the 1960 U.N. visit isn’t kept nearby as a lucky charm.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-483321/Putin-vilified-West–great-leader.html

Says Mikhail Gorbachev: Major changes are underway, changes that are moving ahead in Russia. Not everyone understands those complexities,”… “Putin salvaged the country from the ravages of Boris Yeltsin, whose rule as president of Russia from 1991 to 1999 set the country careening toward capitalism at the cost of great economic and social turmoil”… “Now Russia is having a resurgence, not for the first time in its history,”…. “We need your understanding that we are halfway in our transition to a free and fully democratic state.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120402218.html

Says Henry Kissinger: I do not consider Russia a dictatorial state. A vote of 64.3% shows that there is a significant part of the population that did not vote for Putin…. “Of course we have our preferences, and of course we have our sympathies, but we also have to deal with a government in Russia that exists. And we need some understanding for the adjustments required by a country in a period of transition”… He (Putin) is extremely intelligent, very focused on the subject under discussion and very familiar with the issues in foreign policy. He does not try to sweep you away with personal charm. It is a combination of aloofness, considerable intelligence, strategic grasp and Russian nationalism.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/personoftheyear/article/

And the Ukraine is getting really nasty…

Ken,
Urho Kekkonen was a wise politician, a real statesman. He cared about his nation and made right decisions. Finns are reasonable, prudent nation. Unlike Hungarians they fought their own war, not for others, they proven to be brave soldiers, did not smear themselves with killing Jews and sending them to Aushwitz. Being defeated by an overwhelming force, they came out of the war with dignity, not allowing enemy on their territory, saved the lives of their soldiers and wellbeing of their civilians. They managed to stay independent and to benefit from their position between the USSR and the Western Europe. In the result, Finland now enjoys one of the highest level of life among the other countries. Finns can work hard and still have time to relax.
The Hungarians volunteered to fight for Germans and than tried to betray them, they were not very good on the battlefield, committed a lot of atrocities on the occupied territories (ask Ukrainians who survived the occupation, they will tell you that Hungarians were cheap marauders and crueler occupiers than Germans). They were defeated by Soviets, bombed, raped, lost a hundreds of thousands of lives, their economy was ruined. The country was occupied, lost its independence for more than 40 years, and, yes, had “to suck up to the Soviets”. The lost territories of Transylvania, Transcarpathia and Voyevodina is a divine justice you well deserved. As well as the greed and consumerism that makes Hungarian to slave and to moonlight without sufficient vacations unlike any other nation in Europe, and still be well behind Finland, you are trying to teach.

So, I would expect him to foment trouble in Ukraine, and anywhere else he can do it.

I read once that a Russian said that “The Russian people will tolerate bread and no empire, or no bread and an empire, but will not tolerate no bread and no empire”.
Sadly, it’s a whole lot easier for Putin to provide empire than bread.

At least Hitler was creative enough to get Austria and Czechoslovakia without a shot (and at the time, the Cz army was bigger and better than Germany’s), and bribed industrialists to put everyone to work. Putin only got part of Georgia, lost a number of planes, and got his stock market to tank and investment to flee, while oil prices dropped and his economy continued to slide.

On Crimea — go slow, and look at the world as it, not the way it should be in the abstract. Any attempt to take back the Crimea would be horribly destabilizing, engendering a much more dangerous world. That is a fact.

Good article here on faux Democratic Georgia: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2008/sep/22/00008/