Thursday 8 August 2013

Putin gets the last laugh

Obama Snubs, Russia Laughs, Putin Wins

In the U.S., President Barack Obama's decision to cancel a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin for harboring fugitive Edward Snowden is seen as an important diplomatic demarche.

By Leonid Bershidsky

Bloomberg,

8 August, 2013

From the Russian perspective, it's a bit of a joke.

One freshly minted Russian witticism, picked up by the news site Gazeta.ru, portrayed the U.S. president as a jilted suitor: "Obama won't see Putin because Putin is already seeing Snowden."

The White House issued a statement saying Obama "looked forward to" the September G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, but that he had decided against a one-on-one meeting with Putin "given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last 12 months." As regards the man wanted in the U.S. for leaking information on government surveillance, the White House said: "Russia’s disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship."

The fact that Obama stopped short of skipping the entire G-20 meeting was seen in the Putin camp as a sign of weakness. The dominant theory is that the U.S. president did not really want to make hostile moves against Russia, but domestic interests forced him to make a show of chastising Putin.

"Obama is under powerful pressure from the cold war lobby," political analyst Sergei Markov told the news agency Interfax.

"This is clearly a political defeat for Obama," pro-Putin newspaper editor Vitaly Tretyakov wrote on the social network Vkontakte. In an eerie echo of the White House statement, Tretyakov added: "Russia, strictly speaking, does not care. What could we expect from Obama's visit? A second reset? But the first one failed. A second detente? Who even remembers the first one?"

Putin's liberal opponents, for their part, could not sympathize with Obama's move. They saw better reasons than Snowden's asylum to chastise Putin.

"It's sad that Obama did not refuse to meet with Putin because of human rights violations in Russia but rather because of rights violations in the U.S.," blogger Oleg Kozyrev wrote on Twitter.

The two leaders did not have much to discuss, anyway.

Russia and the United States do not see eye to eye on most issues, from gay rights to the civil war in Syria. The differences have been starkly evident for at least a year, since Putin returned to the Kremlin after a four-year hiatus. Now a man wanted in the U.S. for espionage has found an apartment in Moscow, is looking for a job and sending out invitations to family in the U.S. If a meeting would not have changed anything, neither does its cancellation.

"Obama canceled his meeting with Putin," Russia's most popular anti-Putin politician Alexei Navalny, who is now running for mayor of Moscow, wrote on Twitter. "As for me, I held my meeting with the residents of Zyablikovo neighborhood as planned."

Russia Responds To Obama Snub: "We Are Disappointed... But The Snowden Situation Wasn't Created By Us"

Zero Hedge,

7 August, 2013

Earlier we reported that in an act of embarassing political ineptitude not to mention detente reminiscent of the Cold War's worst days, the US president did his best Freudian transferrance attempt today by blaming Putin for his ever escalating headaches caused by one 30 year old NSA whistleblower, and cancelling bilateral talks with the Russian president. And can anyone blame him: with the US increasingly slighted by both superascedent eastern powers, Russia and China, the US finds itself in a position in which it has never been - where foreign nations get to simply say "no." Here is what else Russia is saying in the aftermath of Obama's childish response.

From BBC:

The Kremlin says it is "disappointed" the US cancelled bilateral talks in September, after Russia granted asylum to intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's foreign affairs adviser said the move showed the US could not develop ties with Russia on an "equal basis".

Russian foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said on Wednesday Russia was not to blame over the Snowden affair.

"This decision is clearly linked to the situation with former agent of US special services [Edward] Snowden, which hasn't been created by us," he said during a phone conference with the press.

"For many years, the Americans have avoided signing an extradition agreement," Mr Ushakov said, "And they have invariably responded negatively to our requests for extradition of people who committed crimes on the territory of Russia, pointing at the absence of such agreement."

But he added the invitation for the bilateral summit was still open.

"Russian representatives are ready to continue working together with American partners on all key issues on the bilateral and multilateral agenda," Mr Ushakov said.

It's sad when Russia makes more sense than the American president. And speaking of the American president, here is his official stance for the reason he escalated:

The decision to cancel the US-Russia summit comes the day after Mr Obama appeared on an evening chat show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, in which he condemned a newly enacted anti-gay law in Russia.

"I have no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them," Mr Obama said.

So... it's all about the homosexuals?

Then again, as always happens in politics, it is likely all just for show...