“Russian NATO” Collapses in Humiliating Failure

Aleksandr Golts, writing in the Moscow Times:

Practically every hospital-themed television show has an episode in which doctors attempt to revive a dying patient without noticing that the person is already dead. Something similar happened at the Collective Security Treaty Organization summit held this month in Yerevan. Even noting that the meeting was riddled with disagreements would not go far enough to describe the confusion that reigns in the CSTO today.

EDITORIAL: Chaos in Kyrgyzstan

EDITORIAL

Chaos in Kyrgyzstan

It seems like only yesterday that a Russia-supported coup d’etat swept aside the pro-U.S. government of Kyrgyzstan in favor of one sympathetic to Russia.  And now, the world already sees the results of that action:  brutal, bloody ethnic violence, a massive refugee crisis, and Russian military forces moving to seize yet another former Soviet slave state once again by the throat (the Russian Scoop blog has photos from the scene and more details).  There are already 400,000 refugees and the situation looks increasingly hopeless.  Indeed, the only thing that may save Kyrgyzstan from this fate is Russian cowardice in the face of the Frankenstein monster it has created.

The notion that a Russia-sponsored putsch could possibly result in better living conditions for the people of Kyrgyzstan was ridiculous from the beginning.

The Putin Pantomime

Australian Herald correspondent Paul McGeough writing on The Age website:

To better understand the geopolitical dynamic of upheaval in the remote central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, it is instructive to look to Georgia, 2500 kilometres and five national borders to the west.

Both are former Soviet satellites. In the face of clumsy efforts by their leaders to tango with the West, the Kremlin is increasingly agitated by a new American presence on a sprawling dance floor it considered its own.

As the bullet-riddled bodies of protesters were collected from the streets of Bishkek last week and the President, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, fled the capital, the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, was pure pantomime: ”Neither Russia, nor your humble servant, nor Russian officials have any links whatsoever to these events.”

That reading does not describe recent events accurately.

EDITORIAL: The Obamination in Kyrgyzstan

EDITORIAL

The Obamination in Kyrgyzstan

With the announcement from rebel leaders in Kyrgyzstan that they were assisted by Russia in their coup d’etat which left blood flowing in rivers through the streets of the capital city, Bishkek, last week, our very worst fears about the abomination known as Barack Obama were realized.

Obama claimed to be “resetting” relations with Russia from the Bush years, and he sure has done so.  Russia has ousted the pro-U.S. regime in Bishkek that had thumbed its nose at Russia and insisted on preserving the U.S. military base just outside the capital city.  It has reached out to the maniacal Venezuelan ruler Hugo Chavez, promising him nuclear and rocket technology as well as billions in weapons. And it goes on shamelessly providing that same type of technology to Iran.  Obama has even gone so far as to authorize U.S. soldiers to march through Red Square saluting Putin on V-E day.  Rumors are beginning to fly, and we report some in today’s issue, that Russian troops will march into Georgia once again this summer.  The new ruler of Ukraine has just repudiated NATO membership for his country.

Welcome to the Obamination. To put it mildly, we are appalled.

EDITORIAL: Just call him Vladimir “Sucker” Putin

EDITORIAL

Just call him Vladimir “Sucker” Putin

Not long ago, Russophiles were strutting and preening and bragging about their clever ploy to bribe Kyrgyzstan with $2 billion to boot the United States out of its military base in that tiny former Soviet republic.

Oops. Last week came news that Kyrgyzstan was doing no such thing, and would pocket Russia’s largesse whilst accepting triple the former U.S. rent to allow the Americans to stay as long as they like.  The Russians, fuming and sputtering in a most pathetic and neo-Soviet manner, are left with mucho eggski on their faces.

Condemning Russian Provocation in Kyrgyzstan

Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University and a former foreign policy correspondent for the New York Times, writing in the San Fransisco Chronicle, documents Russia’s brazen, aggressive challenge to Barack Obama:

America’s competitors and adversaries are certainly not greeting President Obama with open arms. During his first month in office, many have given him the stiff arm.  Pakistan made a deal with the Taliban to give it a huge swath of territory in the middle of the country for a new haven. North Korea is threatening war with South Korea.  Many in the Arab world who had welcomed Obama are now attacking him because he did not denounce Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Iran launched a satellite into space, demonstrating that it has the ability to construct an intercontinental ballistic missile to match up with the nuclear weapons it is apparently trying to build.

There’s more, but none of it can match the sheer gall behind Russia’s open challenge to Washington.