Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that the Obama administration’s “Reset” in relations with Russia “cannot last forever,” and must be followed by a closer relationship, according to a Reuters news report. Lavrov, however, is willing to wait until the outcome of the elections in the U.S. for more specifics.
President Barack Obama has already assured Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” in his dealings with Russia after the U.S. presidential elections.
The kind of role the U.S. would have in Moscow’s world view was made apparent by Lavrov’s boss, Russian president Vladimir Putin, who clearly favors the rule of a heavy handed Communist elite.
Two days before Lavrov unilaterally placed limitations on the Obama administration’s “reset,” Putin had relayed his enthusiastic congratulations to Chinese president Hu Jintao on the 63rd anniversary of the 1949 Communist takeover of the China mainland. After that victory, the U.S.-supported Nationalist government of Chinag Kai-Shek took refuge on the island of Taiwan. The Russian language online version of RIA Novosti carried Putin’s remarks.
Putin has referred to the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geo-political catastrophe of the 20th century,” and now applauds the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, which has killed tens of millions of its own citizens since its founding.
Today, Beijing does not kill to the same degree, but it still tightly controls its population. The secret police is an ever-present reality in the Peoples Republic.
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