Cross Us And We Will Crush You, Warns Medvedev
Yes, Medvedev reminds me of Mr Bean.
Russia is starting to sound a lot like Iran. Who the fuck do they think they are? As for this “Ms Shevtsova” comments toward the end of this report, tell that to the Georgians lady. I wouldn’t trust Russia again as far as I could spit.
August 19, 2008
The Times
President Medvedev of Russia yesterday promised a “shattering blow” against any foreign power that moved against Russian citizens.
The threat will compound the fears of former Soviet states, which are concerned that they could be next after Russia’s attack on Georgia.
“If someone thinks they can kill our citizens, kill soldiers and officers fulfilling the role of peacekeepers, we will never allow this,” Mr Medvedev told a group of Second World War veterans in Kursk. “Anyone who tries to do this will receive a shattering blow.”
He continued: “Russia has the capabilities - economic, political and military. Nobody has any illusions left about that.”
Russia’s incursion into Georgia, and its reluctance to leave, has alarmed former Soviet states such as Ukraine and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The war was designed in part to send a message to the former Soviet states that “you can’t solve your problems by running to give the West a hug”, Liliya Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Centre in Moscow, said.
At the start of the war, Mr Medvedev said it was his constitutional right to defend the “lives and dignity” of Russian citizens. Georgia’s allies now fear that Russia will begin to throw its weight around in defence of the millions of ethnic Russians who live outside the motherland.
The break-up of the Soviet Union left a huge Russian diaspora outside the country. There are more than 8 million ethnic Russians in Ukraine, 4.5 million in Kazakhstan and 1.2 million in the Baltic states.
Russia justified its attack on Georgia by insisting that it was acting to protect the 90 per cent of South Ossetians who have Russian passports.
How many of the passports are genuine is another question, as the region has long been infamous for smuggling and counterfeit passports and dollars.
Yevgeniya Latynina, a columnist, wrote last week that when the South Ossetian leader, Eduard Kokoity, received his passport, he opened it to find that it contained the picture of Abraham Lincoln from a $5 note instead of his own photograph.
Russia’s relations with Ukraine and the Baltic States have worsened in recent years after Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined Nato and the EU, and Ukraine tried to follow them.
One man was killed in demonstrations staged by Russians in Tallinn last year after Estonian authorities moved a Second World War monument that had been erected in the city by the Soviet regime. Moscow has complained that ethnic Russians are discriminated against in the Baltic states - an accusation that the EU has supported in some cases.
Ukraine and the Baltic States were quick to support Georgia, but Belarus, normally an ardent supporter of its only ally in Europe, meekly called for a ceasefire. There are more than one million ethnic Russians in Belarus.
The leaders of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia condemned the actions of Russian forces and travelled to Georgia last week to show solidarity with Tbilisi. Estonia’s Postimees newspaper even published a map explaining the weapons Russia might use against the country.
Ukraine told Moscow that it could not use its Crimea-based Black Sea Fleet in armed conflicts without permission, after warships were deployed near Georgia. On Sunday Ukraine offered to create a joint missile defence network with the West amid fears that its port city of Sevastopol, home of the fleet, could become the next flashpoint between Russia and its former satellite states.
Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s reformist President, who visited Tbilisi last week to support President Saakashvili of Georgia, said that the use of Russian ships for a war violated Ukraine’s neutrality and risked drawing it into conflict.
Ms Shevtsova, however, dismissed the idea that Russia might attack other countries.
“It is not possible,” she said, arguing that Mr Medvedev’s rhetoric was for internal consumption. “It would be suicide for Russia; it is just a show.”
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Hey remember the episode of Bean when his car got RUN OVER BY A TANK when he pissed off the military one too many times?
Think about it…
August 18th, 2008 at 4:30 pm““Russia has the capabilities - economic, political and military. Nobody has any illusions left about that.””
LMAO
Russkies looked like a bunch of drunks to me.
Ukraine should line its borders with full cases of vodka.
Oh and $5 bills to use as passport photos apparently.
August 18th, 2008 at 4:38 pmBlah blah blah, we will bury you, blah blah blah.
Did he bang his shoe on the table too?
We’ve heard all this bullshit before so sit down and STFU!
August 18th, 2008 at 6:33 pmMedvedev: “Russia has the cababilities–economic, political and “military. Nobody has any illusions left about that.”
I disagree with Sully. Russia’s soldiers look well-fed and their uniforms are smartly turned out. Something’s going on that is not being reported in the West.
Even Germany knew something was fishy in the late 1990s. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl called for a halt to more financial aid to Russia because “billions in International Monetary Fund aid [had] dissapeared.” Russia’s chief auditor had told the BBC the money was missing because of “incompetence or corruption.”
August 18th, 2008 at 7:05 pm“I disagree with Sully. Russia’s soldiers look well-fed and their uniforms are smartly turned out.”
Where?
August 18th, 2008 at 7:11 pm…and Russian corruption is hardly news. Jeffrey Sachs quit in protest years ago over it.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:22 pmAny ideas on what is going on currently?
Sully:
Cops talk about a pattern and practice when defining died-in-the-wool criminals. Russia has a pattern and practice of lying. I have a folder of newspaper articles from the 1990s exposing many of Russia’s lies even as she pretended to be a friend to the West.
I differentiate between the Russian government and the Russian people. However, the propaganda machine has been turned on again, and not just recently, and the new generation of Russians will be brainwashed almost as badly as Krushshchev’s generation.
The young people during Krushshchev’s time “had no idea what had happened in Stalin’s time, no notion of the extent of the repressions.” (From a biography of Nikita Khrushchev by his son, Sergei Khrushchev. Sergei is a naturalized U.S. citizen.)
Regarding the Russian soldiers, in the early 1990s, my spouse and I hosted a Russian sailor for a day when his communications ship berthed at a U.S. port. He and his comrades were pathetically thin, nothing but skin and bones.
Believe me, the Russian soldiers in Georgia look very well fed now.
Regarding Russia’s readiness for war, didn’t you read (during Clinton’s second term) that Russia had taken billions of dollars of Western aid money and secretly used it to build up its submarine force? I’d give you the date and name of the publisher, but I’ve misplaced that article.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:07 pmthere are still “corruptions” in the former URSS republics, one can’t forget 50 years or 70 years of rules within a decade. Also “corruption” is sometime a millenarium habit for some of them
Billie is right on that, since the Putin’s youth indoctrinment started, something of the weird image about Russians that we used to laugh at, is changing
there still remains the unemployeds and the crap of the society that eternally gets “drunk”
August 18th, 2008 at 11:51 pmtime for our intelligence to start teaching Russian again for the coming conflict
August 19th, 2008 at 4:56 amTo Billie “I hosted a Russian sailor for a day when his communications ship berthed at a U.S. port. He and his comrades were pathetically thin, nothing but skin and bones”. - That’s what real sailors should look like - if they were fat and obese like typical US guys then they will
August 19th, 2008 at 6:22 amfall off the mast and instantly sink as sure as not.
“Believe me, the Russian soldiers in Georgia look very well fed now.”
Thanks for your reply.
I believe you. But it has always been true that Russia fed its army first. Even under Soviet rule.
Nevertheless, my point is what we are seeing is the Russian 58th Army; a force fresh from Chechnya that is ‘disciplined’ in one way only, the rape of a country and its people. Looting, bank robbery, rape, wanton destruction of homes, etc., are not normally the characteristic of a disiplined force who’s stated goals are the ‘protection of its own citizens’ only. Of course, that could have been their ‘mission’, in which case Putin and Medvedev are guilty of war crimes. Again, the first target of that type of ‘force’ was likely the liquor supply.
And they were obviously lying in wait to ‘respond’ to any perceived aggression against bogus Russian citizens.
And yes I am aware of Russian corruption. As I said, Jeffrey Sachs quit over it 15 or so years ago. He was one of the ‘Harvard boys’ Clinton sent to try and help Russia integrate into ‘polite society’ in 1991 or so. Quitting and making quite a fuss over Russian governmental corruption a few years later. It’s no better today.
August 19th, 2008 at 6:41 amI don’t to avocate the behviour of the russian army though the people that most likely made robberies, rapes… were the Ossetians, Aphkasians, chechens… that joined the russian army in retalation of the Georgians
However, the russian army didn’t really want to control them, thinking this was a justified vengence, also because of their complicated administrative means, they didn’t want to bother to make reports
August 19th, 2008 at 11:52 am