Vladimir Putin Speaks on Merits of Hip Hop and Street Art

My, we've come a long way. Prime Minister Putin says that you can't break dance and be on drugs and alcohol. Hip hoppers bring a "unique Russian charm," he said. He said hip hop raises social awareness in this awkward video:

Hillary Clinton Says Russia Recognizes Iranian Threat

The U.S. is now in sync with the rest of the world on diplomacy and frankly, that's a relief. Sometimes I get to thinking what John McCain, with Sarah Palin at his side, might be doing about Iran. I don't think McCain has the modern mind to tackle such issues. Palin just doesn't have the mind for such things as foreign policy. I'm sure many people don't appreciate just how delicate the task is to build international consensus on Iran.

Wrapping up a European tour in Moscow, Mrs Clinton said Russian leaders had in private said they were ready to act if Tehran did not meet its obligations.
But Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on a visit to China, said it was too early to talk about sanctions on Iran.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that threats of sanctions were counter-productive.
Iran denies allegations by the US, EU and Israel that it is trying to build the bomb under cover of a civilian nuclear energy programme.
Mrs Clinton told the BBC on Wednesday that Russia in the past six months had "moved tremendously" to acknowledge the threat of Iran's programme. BBC

Watch the video here.
Hillary also spoke to university students, and it's evident that Obama and the state department are on the same page:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday challenged Russians to open up their political system and embrace diversity and dissent, saying that Cold War-era thinking would limit their prosperity in the 21st century.

Clinton spoke to university students in Moscow and also in Kazan, the capital of Russia's religiously and ethnically diverse republic of Tatarstan. These informal meetings, which wrapped up a five-day tour of Europe, were aimed at helping redefine U.S.-Russia relations.

Clinton appeared taken with oil-rich Tatarstan, where a mosque and church stand side by side inside the Kazan Kremlin. She talked with students about how their republic, with a moderate Muslim majority, could be a model for promoting religious tolerance.

"The level of religious tolerance and interfaith connection, the economic progress, the stability, is very impressive, but it also speaks to how we transfer these lessons," she said. NPR

Hillary on Russian radio:

Reporting from Moscow University:

No new sanctions on Iran for now. The color analysis is.... interesting:

Obama and Putin Power Breakfast

Next up, the G8 Summit in Italy.
July 8-10: Obama will attend the G8 in Italy (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States).
July 10: Obama meets the Pope
July 10-11: Obama will visit Ghana
Chuck Todd says Obama got lectured by Putin:

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Russians are skeptical at best about the U.S.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Obama's Russian Tight Rope

Obama needs to work with Dmitry Medvedev and Putin. He'll meet with both in Moscow:

Mr. Obama himself waded into the issue on Thursday when he made a pointed remark about Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who is Mr. Medvedev’s mentor and is widely assumed to be Russia’s real ruler.

Mr. Obama said that Mr. Putin, the former president, had “one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new.” Mr. Obama said that it was time to move forward and that Mr. Medvedev “understands that.”

The comment suggested that Mr. Obama was trying to build up Mr. Medvedev, who the Americans say they believe may be easier to deal with than Mr. Putin.

American officials said that Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev met at the Group of 8 summit meeting in London in April and that they seemed to hit it off. But the officials said they feared that Mr. Putin stood in the way.

Mr. Obama also may have been trying to protect his own domestic political flank, anticipating criticism that he is too easy on the Kremlin.

Mr. Putin, who is often quick with a retort when criticized, seemed to go out of his way on Friday not to take offense at Mr. Obama’s comment. Read the whole thing at NYT

Sarkozy Uses Bush to Score a Point with Putin

By way of Think Progress:

Nicolas Sarkozy saved the President of Georgia from being hanged “by the balls” — a threat made last summer by Vladimir Putin, according to an account that emerged yesterday from the Élysée Palace.

The Russian Prime Minister had revealed his plans for disposing of Mr Saakashvili when Mr Sarkozy was in Moscow in August to broker a ceasefire in Georgia.

Jean-David Levitte, Mr Sarkozy’s chief diplomatic adviser, reported the exchange in a news magazine before an EU-Russia summit today. The meeting will be chaired by the French leader and President Medvedev.

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”

$1 Billion to Repair Georgia

The "We all are Georgians" Georgia. We haven't even repaired New Orleans.

NYT: On Wednesday, The New York Times on the Web flashed a headline that caught my eye: “U.S. to Unveil $1 Billion Aid Package to Repair Georgia.” Wow, I thought. That’s great: $1 billion to fix Georgia’s roads and schools. But as I read on, I quickly realized that I had the wrong Georgia.

We’re going to spend $1 billion to fix the Georgia between Russia and Turkey, not the one between South Carolina and Florida.

Sorry, but the thought of us spending $1 billion to repair a country whose president, though a democrat, recklessly provoked a war with a brutish Russia, which was itching to bash its neighbor, makes no sense to me. Yes, we should diplomatically squeeze Russia until it withdraws its troops; no one should be invading neighbors.

But where are our priorities? How many wars can we fight at once without finishing even one? Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Georgia. Which is the priority? Americans are struggling to meet their mortgages, and we’re sending $1 billion to a country whose president behaved irresponsibly, just to poke Vladimir Putin in the eye. Couldn’t we poke Putin with $100 million? And shouldn’t we be fostering a dialogue with Georgia and with Putin? Otherwise, where is this going? A new cold war? Over what?

And that brings me to our election.

Bush and Clinton's Failed Russia Policy

Thomas Friedman weighs in on the Russia Georgia conflict. In summary: Bush and Clinton foreign policy both failed in Russian relations. But now, U.S. must support Georgia, he says.

NYT: If the conflict in Georgia were an Olympic event, the gold medal for brutish stupidity would go to the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin. The silver medal for bone-headed recklessness would go to Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and the bronze medal for rank short-sightedness would go to the Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams.

Let’s start with us. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, I was among the group — led by George Kennan, the father of “containment” theory, Senator Sam Nunn and the foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum — that argued against expanding NATO, at that time.

It seemed to us that since we had finally brought down Soviet communism and seen the birth of democracy in Russia the most important thing to do was to help Russian democracy take root and integrate Russia into Europe. Wasn’t that why we fought the cold war — to give young Russians the same chance at freedom and integration with the West as young Czechs, Georgians and Poles? Wasn’t consolidating a democratic Russia more important than bringing the Czech Navy into NATO?

All of this was especially true because, we argued, there was no big problem on the world stage that we could effectively address without Russia — particularly Iran or Iraq. Russia wasn’t about to reinvade Europe. And the Eastern Europeans would be integrated into the West via membership in the European Union.

No, said the Clinton foreign policy team, we’re going to cram NATO expansion down the Russians’ throats, because Moscow is weak and, by the way, they’ll get used to it. Message to Russians: We expect you to behave like Western democrats, but we’re going to treat you like you’re still the Soviet Union. The cold war is over for you, but not for us. Read More

I Want Obama Across the Table From Putin

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty asks on Face the Nation: Who do you want sitting across from Vladimir Putin? John McCain, who sees KGB in the eyes of Putin?
Why would I want someone who already sees the enemy?
That leads me to believe that all McCain will do is poke Russia in his way every chance he gets. He's not even in office and he's already provoking Russia.
We've seen McCain get irritated. It happens frequently. Putin already is using Georgia to get back at Bush and would likely continue to do the same with McCain with his "We're all Georgians" talk.
McCain can talk but he can't walk the walk on that one and he shouldn't have meddled to the extent he did.
I want Obama to be sitting across the table Putin or Dmitri Medvedev.
Obama will be tough and smart. He's clearly the person with better judgment. That's what we need. Not a war hero. We want to avoid wars not start them.
McCain is too black and white. Obama can think in the gray areas and he can do it with a calm head.
The problem is many Americans will run for the John McCain lever when the Bush administration plays the terrorist card near election time. Bush WILL play that card. No doubt.

Now I'm convinced that Obama needs a vice president with big national security credentials. Vice presidents usually don't matter but this is not your typical election. Obama's choice needs to be someone that Americans trust. Americans won't vote on the economy, despite what they say and despite what pollsters say. We'll be voting on national security, no matter how much we complain about the economy. 

Gates: U.S. Has Few Options On Russia

Swamp: It didn't seem that long ago that President Bush told the world about looking Vladimir Putin in the eye and "getting a sense of his soul."

Today, Bush's defense secretary, Robert Gates, brushed aside the question of whether Putin could be trusted, but he didn't exactly give the Russian prime minister a rousing endorsement.

"I have never believed that one should make national security policy on
the basis of trust," Gates said. "I think you make national security policy based on interests and on realities.

The Bush administration appears to have few options to pressure the Russians. Gates made crystal clear that U.S. military intervention is not an option and that because of commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan--as well as political sensitivities--that the U.S. was unlikely to take part in any peacekeeping mission in the region.

In his first comments since the fighting started in Georgia, Gates warned that Russia's actions could endanger Moscow-Washington relations for years to come." Gates remarks at a Pentagon news conference comes a day after Russian troops drove into the Georgian city of Gori despite publicly agreeing to stop its offensive.

Russia's Forced Elections

as contentious and sometimes caustic that our presidential election process is in the U.S., at least we're not being forced to vote for a president. in russia, employers are making their workers vote for president vladimir putin's chosen successor, dmitri medvedev. what's the point of elections? anyway, this is a reason why we should be voting our heads off.