IMHO, this was almost certainly cleared with the Russian government before Obama made his statement. "I'm going to say blah blah blah to appease my domestic critics blah blah blah." Reagan used to do it with the Soviets all the time. I suspect Bush did it with Putin and vice versa.
There is a reason diplomatic meetings are closed. ;)
--- On Fri, 7/3/09, dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
> From: dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Obamachev
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Friday, July 3, 2009, 1:25 AM
> General Secretary Obamachev of the
> USSA (United States of Securitized
> Assets) takes time out of his busy schedule of appointing
> Wall Street
> apparatchiks to leech a creaking, diseased economy and
> cheerleading the
> gloriously irresistible march of revolutionary
> democratization, a.k.a. the
> USSA's eight-year occupation of Afghanistan, to hector
> Putin on the eve of
> the upcoming meeting with one of the USSA's leading
> creditors:
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8131449.stm
> "...but Prime Minister Putin still has a great deal of sway
> in Russia...
> and I think it's important that even as we move forward
> with President
> Medvedev, that Putin understands that the old Cold War
> approaches to
> US-Russian relations is outdated, it's time to move forward
> in a different
> direction. Medvedev understands that, I think Putin has one
> foot in the
> old ways of doing business and one foot in the new."
>
> In the old days, US power elites indulged in Kremlinology
> as a way of
> sneering at Soviet incompetence. Nowadays, it's turned into
> the
> increasingly pathetic attempt at finding a creditor willing
> to buy US
> T-bills.
>
> -- DRR
>
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>