Putin Bashes WWII Allies

[Guest Gichin13]

Originally posted by visionary

Denying that Moscow was to blame for Germany’s post-war division, Putin said Soviet leaders had worked hard “to preserve the integrity and unity of Germany” after the war. “But some of our allies unfortunately took the opposite position.”

What a load of crap that line is.

[Cskin]

What is with these WWII participants short circuiting and forgetting their own terrible deeds of the War to end all wars?

You guys have done a good job elightening the masses to the atrocities of the Soviet Union and Germany. I'm often shocked at the lack of responsibility Japan accepts for their role in the killing of thousands of civilians.

Yeah... we targeted Dresden because of it's military significance. It's war... and unfortunately civilians die in war. We also killed thousands with the BOMBS over Japan.... and in the process saved nearly a million more lives.

Get over it! Let's move on. We've got new threats rearing their ugly heads, including N. Korea and Iran, and we've got morons continuing to whine over a war 60 years ago. :doh:

[Thiebear]

So many comments on the entire war....

USSR was helpful in removing a GREATER EVIL at the time... nuff said.

Without the USSR.... who knows... but we do know that you cant beat down someone bent on Genocide/World Domination and then get blamed for a single city that produces parts as an atrocity....

[Prosperity]

Schroder think that Germany was liberated when it surrendered? That is a bold lie. The Germans were scared ****less of the Russians. For good reason too, the Russians were very pissed off and were not exactly kind when they reached the German cities.

[Larry]

I agree, Liberty.

I think we should take a poll of Germans: "Who liberated Germany?"

Somehow, I suspect Reagan will get more votes than Stalin. (Although, I'd bet they give the credit to a German.)

[visionary]

I hope some nations demand that Putin apologize for his comments...it would serve him right ot have to make a public apology...in Poland...Germany...and some others places.

[visionary]

Interesting...

The Problem With Putin

Bush's Moscow visit will be a trip to Fortress Russia.

By Richard Wolffe and Eve Conant

Newsweek

May 9 issue - She was supposed to be smoothing the way for President George W. Bush's trip to Moscow, a celebration of Hitler's defeat 60 years ago this week. But instead of rekindling the spirit of wartime allies, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice only provoked the Russians, who were offended by Bush's plans. Why, they wanted to know, was Bush also traveling to Latvia and Georgia, two countries that were once part of the Soviet Union? "Bush going to Latvia and Georgia will make them think they have carte blanche to do whatever they want," Sergei Lavrov, Russia's blunt foreign minister, complained to Rice. Welcome to Moscow, Mr. President. Please leave your democratic ideals at home.

As he tries to build a legacy of promoting democracy around the globe, Bush has run headlong into Fortress Russia. Increasingly, he's fending off the kind of Russian accusations that once dominated the Soviet era of geopolitics: of covert action on Russia's borders, competing spheres of influence and zero-sum games. Bush wants to visit Latvia and Georgia to show the world what young democracies look like. Instead the Russians see his tour as yet more American interference in their backyard. Putin refuses to move his troops out of Georgia and opposes Bush's support for a new democratic government in repressive Belarus. The Russian president also is flexing his muscle in the Middle East, confirming last week that he would sell antiaircraft missiles to Syria. "We didn't appreciate that," Bush explained to reporters at his Thursday-night White House press conference, "but we made ourselves clear."

Tough talk is not just an American strategy. Putin treats the little Baltic states with disdain, refusing to sign their border treaties and lecturing them on the need for Russian-language schools. "The rhetoric coming out of Russia doesn't seem to have accepted our current situation as members of the EU and NATO," Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga told NEWSWEEK. Russia remains outraged by what it sees as U.S. meddling in the recent revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine and American ties to the Baltic states. "Those countries, in our view, are what you might call bad boys," says Gleb Pavlovski, an analyst with Kremlin ties.

Inside the Bush administration, though, democracy is just one item on the agenda with Moscow. U.S. officials tell NEWSWEEK that pushing democracy onto Putin is a lower priority than winning his help to halt the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea. They are taking a relaxed approach to Russian troops in Georgia, and suggest that Putin's backsliding on democracy is less dramatic than it seems. Overall, Bush's strategy is to keep open his channel of communication with Putin, which means stopping short of a confrontation.

Meanwhile, Bush is stepping into a minefield of post-Soviet politics. To protest their Soviet occupations, two of the three Baltic states won't take part in Russia's World War II commemorations. But this bitter dispute is less about the past than the present—about where Russia's border lies and who counts as Russian. Vike-Freiberga, who plans to go to Moscow, says Putin sees Latvia's Russian-speaking citizens as "belonging to Russia." Bush's challenge is to persuade Putin to remember not just the end of World War II, but the end of the cold war.

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7693006/site/newsweek/

[Johnny Punani2]

ooof...

That newsweek article doesn't sound good for improved US/Russian relations anytime soon. Did we have that big of a role in the Ukraine elections? The Russians act like we had a major influence in them.

[redman]

This issue is something to watch. Russia is struggling with its place in the world much the same way that France is. They are traditionally Great Powers and yet their empires have bled away from them over time, and they are not really set apart from a lot of other nations in foreign policy matters.

Unlike France, however, which acts as a gadfly more than anything, there's a radical nationalism to Russia's leadership that concerns me, and the longer Putin is in power the more he exhibits it. Never forget that he was raised in the Soviet system and was a member of the security apparatus with the KGB. He'd be just as happy to be referred to as the Soviet Premier.

[PCS]

True enough. Putin is oldschool go be sure. Some of this reads like the stuff put out back in the Cold War days. American President making the rounds and the Soviet leadership puffing it's collective chest out in response.