Russia! - It's going to get naughty!

[melthebell]

lol

how babyish?

 

you wont send us a norty man so we'll expell 4 of your diplomats

right youve expelled 4 of us so we'll expell 4 of yours

 

has somebody told em it involved murder, its not a playground spat fgs

[Tony]

Oh come on. It's all good knockabout fun. Where's the fabulous Stuart Hall when you need him?

[pete_jim]

I went to St Petersburg recently and found watching the Russian news very interesting as all this extraditing people stuff was just begining to surface. We spoke quite a lot to the guide over the time we were there too.

 

Anyone who thinks it's just a bit of superficial posturing over something that reads like a spy novel is I feel sadly mistaken.

 

For years we, and the Americans have had the upper hand in dealing with Russia. But when you go there and realise the vast resources that they have, the numbers of population and so on, they are actually gaining the upper hand. We, the west, have absolutely no right to tell them what to do with their resources, any more than we had any right to go into Iraq.

[sanman]

To the contrary we seem to put everyone elses interests before ours - we're racist or thick or far right wing dictators if we don't!! God help us!

I think you're getting two different issues mixed up here - our immigration policy and our foreign relations policy. I agree that our immigration policy is a joke if a blank piece of paper can be

[donkey]

One of the mystifying things about this whole episode is how Berezovsky is being portrayed in the British media, i.e. as a legitimate businessman and decent enough cove threatened and harrassed by a malevolent and evil regime.

 

Watch out, he might send his boys round. The only real difference between these Russian bosses, is some of them have come out tops in Russia, where as others have had to scarper here, and have subsequently aligned themselves with our Government.

[JFKvsNixon]

I think it is important that Putin retains power. He may be hard line by our standards, and he may regularly rattle his sabres; but he is liberal compared to some of the other popular Russian polititions such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if this latest round of sabre rattling may be staged to keep Putin popular in Russia, and help him retain power.

[JFKvsNixon]

You forgot to mention the Cuban missile crisis.

 

It has been argued that the the Cuban missile crisis was more of a back down by the USA. Not only did they agree not to overthrow Castro's regieme and allow a communist contry to exist just of their coast, something that enfuriated the American miltary; they also agreed to remove all their Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

[Phanerothyme]

It has been argued that the the Cuban missile crisis was more of a back down by the USA. Not only did they agree not to overthrow Castro's regime and allow a communist country to exist just of their coast, something that infuriated the American military; they also agreed to remove all their Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

 

The USA also kept the Turkish missile withdrawal a 'secret' and retained a perpetual lease on Guantanamo, amongst other concessions. Although the outcome for both sides was generally mutually agreeable, the Soviets lost the most face and for this Khrushchev was denounced. And it was a rare victory of the doves over the hawks in the US administration. Thank God.

 

The emerging ballistic missile technology allowed warheads to be carried 8-9000 km making "local" missile sites obsolete anyway. The Soviets had recently commissioned their new ballistic missile subs, and the US/NATO already had a sizeable nuclear fleet. So a Turkish missile base was pretty much obsolete too.

 

It resulted in the start of Arms Limitation, which although not an ideal solution to the risk of global nuclear catastrophe, is at least a step in the right direction - and of course the Washington Moscow hotline.

[angle20]

Russia wants Berezovsky - Britain wants Lugovoi.

 

You put your finger on things, Phanerothyme.

 

There is a certain lobby which seeks to stir up conflict between Britain/the West and Russia just as they seek to stir up conflict between Britain/the West and the Muslim world. We should ignore their siren calls.

[angle20]

One of the mystifying things about this whole episode is how Berezovsky is being portrayed in the British media, i.e. as a legitimate businessman and decent enough cove threatened and harrassed by a malevolent and evil regime.

 

Yes, and astonishingly the BBC had him as a panellist on the TV Question Time programme a little while ago.