Although it didn’t make much of an impact in the United States, Vice President Joe Biden’s recent interview with the Wall Street Journal has gotten tongues wagging in Russia’s media as well as the Kremlin. It’s fair to say that the vice president has hit a Russian nerve.
In this article from Russia’s Izvestia newspaper, political scientist Georgiy Bovt exhorts his countrymen not to give a damn about what Biden, Hillary Clinton, or anyone else says, about Russia.
For Izvestia, Georgiy Bovt writes in part:
“And now – oh this bad Biden has said that the Russian economy is ‘withering,’ that the country is threatened by a demographic crisis, that our banking system is weak, and our nuclear deterrent is dissipating before our very eyes.
“So should we say to hell with Biden? And with what Hillary said, too? So someone said something downright insulting to us (although, if Biden’s remarks were made by one of our analysts, this viewpoint would at least be considered worthy of existence), so what? Should we so neurotically attach statements like this with such meaning? Should foreign policy in general, tactically, let alone strategically, be based on a reaction to what someone may have said? … It’s as if someone at the American government level began to respond seriously to the extravagant forecasts of our professor at the Diplomatic Academy [Igor Panarin], who predicts the dissolution of America into several countries within a mere year or two. How dare this teacher of future Russian diplomats threaten the integrity and sovereignty of the United States!”
By Georgiy Bovt, Political Scientist
Translated By Yekaterina Blinova
July 31, 2009
Russia – Izvestia – Original Article (Russian)
It’s doubtful that in the U.S., Vice President Joseph Biden’s recent interview with the Wall Street Journal received the same amount of “media coverage,” as Americans would put it, as it has here in Russia. We always put a lot of stock in what foreigners say about us. In modern history, this goes back to the times that Lenin conversed with Herbert Wells at the Kremlin. Even then, it was important that foreign guests leave enchanted …
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