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Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday became the first world leader to throw down a gauntlet to US president-elect Barack Obama, declaring that the Kremlin would station missiles in the tiny Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland, in response to US plans for an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe.
Mr Medvedev, speaking in his annual address to Russia’s Federal Assembly, also proposed extending the presidential term to six years from the current four, a step which had been proposed under former president, now prime minister Vladimir Putin, who had rejected it.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
And So It Begins
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7 comments:
I couldn't read the article because I didn't want to register to read it. Did Dmitry Medvedev specifically mention Obama? Because Bush is still president and it's happening on his watch, in his administration.
Cat at Scaling Back
You can't be serious.
I've been to Kaliningrad!
I had the same thought, that it is still Bush's adminstration until January, but I do think the gauntlet was thrown because it is Obama who will ultimately have to deal with it. Whether the article mentions Obama directly or not, it's pretty obvious who is being tested here.
Gamed the registration.
Sounds like a gauntlet for OB for sure:
“I think the decision was made to take a tough stand with the United States, giving no concessions to the newly elected president,” said Dmitri Trenin, of the Moscow Carnegie Center, the think-tank."
and
"However, he added that Mr Medvedev did appear to be holding out an olive branch to Mr Obama with the line: “We hope that our partners – the new US administration– will make a choice in favour of fully-fledged relations with Russia.”
Thought I'd mention that there's a Nov.4 interview with Ayers at The New Yorker:
"Ayers said that he had never meant to imply, in an interview with the Times, published coincidentally on 9/11, that he somehow wished he and the Weathermen had committed further acts of violence in the old days. Instead, he said, 'I wish I had done more, but it doesn’t mean I wish we’d bombed more shit.'
". . . Ayers said that he had never been responsible for violence against other people and was acting to end a war in Vietnam in which 'thousands of people were being killed every week.'
“'While we did claim several extreme acts, they were acts of extreme radicalism against property,' he said. 'We killed no one and hurt no one. Three of our people killed themselves.' And yet he was not without regrets. He mocked one of his earlier books, co-written with Dohrn, saying that, while it still is reflective of his radical and activist politics today, he was guilty of 'rhetoric that’s juvenile and inflated—it is what it is.'
(snip)
“I wish I had been wiser,” Ayers said. “I wish I had been more effective, I wish I’d been more unifying, I wish I’d been more principled.”
http://tinyurl.com/59u8on
Cat from Scaling Back
"From what we have seen in recent years _ the creation of a missile defense system, the encirclement of Russia with military bases, the relentless expansion of NATO we have gotten the clear impression that they are testing our strength," Medvedev said.
He's not talking about an Obama administration.
But I found a couple other articles and I do think he's posturing for the new guy.
Cat
That's what Ayers says *now*. It is decidedly NOT what he was saying as recently as the day after 9/11.
And of course Medevev is posturing for the new guy- he's certainly not worried about what a President with only two months left in office is going to do.
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