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April 25, 2005

Putin Deplores Collapse of USSR

 

 

 

During President Vladimir Putin’s state of the nation address at the Kremlin today the Russian president lamented the Soviet Union’s collapse and called it the 20^th Century’s “greatest geopolitical catastrophe”, according to BBC News.  

 

Aside from also bemoaning the millions of ethnic Russians left stranded in satellite countries after the Soviet collapse, the rest of Putin’s message seemed packaged for consumption in the west, touching on issues of concern to foreign investors, as well as of the war on terror and freedom of the press.

 

The BBC also cited one statement by the president in which he referred to “unlawful methods of struggle” which he promised to never allow, to speculate that perhaps Mr. Putin was referring to scenarios in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. But I have to wonder about the reasoning power of folks like the BBC's Moscow man Damian Grammaticas since clearly there were no noted unlawful or violent methods of struggle by any international definition in Ukraine (at least not by the pro-Yuschenko side) – and Kyrgyzstan comparable to those seen in Chechnya or Georgia.

 

It seems clear to me though that Putin's purpose behind his pontification this year was to put an end to the international bleeding as well as to further encourage his own country's already considerable nostalgia for the trappings of those bygone years under the reign of Stalinist extremism.

 

Posted by Martin at April 25, 2005 11:54 AM

Comments

Posted by: beautifulatrocities at April 25, 2005 05:09 PM