Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he sees no ideological grounds for a war with the US — cold or hot — despite strained relations with Washington and the NATO alliance.
Russia’s relations with the US were already at a post-Cold War low when they were further damaged by Russia’s war with US ally Georgia in August. Russia has complained vehemently about what it says is a growing US military presence near its borders.
But Medvedev said on Wednesday that the Cold War was based on ideological differences between the Soviet Union and the NATO countries.
“We do not have such ideological differences around which a new cold or any other kind of war could start,” Medvedev said after talks with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero outside St Petersburg.
Medvedev said he would not “dramatize” troubled ties between Russia and NATO and said NATO needs Russia more than Russia needs NATO.
He also said the outcome of the US presidential election should not affect relations between Washington and Moscow.
Regardless of who wins the US presidency, “Job No. 1 is to deal with the situation in the economy — that’s what must be done,” he said.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also continued Russia’s repeated verbal jabs at the US over the global financial crisis.
“Everything that is happening today in the sphere of economics and finance began, as is known, in the US,” Putin told a Cabinet meeting, according to an official transcript of the meeting.
“This whole crisis, which has hit many countries and, most sadly, the inability to make adequate decisions — this is [the result] not of the irresponsibility of specific individuals but the irresponsibility of a system — a system that pretended to leadership,” he said, clearly referring to the US.
“But we see that it is not only unable to provide leadership but not even capable of making adequate, absolutely necessary decisions to overcome crisis phenomena,” he said.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto, asked to respond to Putin’s remarks, said: “We have dealt with this problem, a very complicated and far-reaching problem, in as aggressive a way possible. And I don’t think there’s any question of that, and I’ll just leave it at that.”
The top US diplomat for Latin America, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, said on Wednesday that, despite Russia’s diplomatic and military overtures in the region, the US has “no intention of reviving Cold War images or Cold War rhetoric.”
“This is a conflict that the region has thankfully left behind,” he said in a telephone interview.
Asked how concerned Washington is about Russia’s deepening ties with Venezuela and its dispatching of a naval squadron there on a visit, he said: “There is no doubt about who holds the preponderance of military power in the Caribbean, so we certainly don’t see this activity as presenting a military or geopolitical threat to us.”
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
RSS