Lying is accepted Kremlin's policy

[Tugay-bey]

The Kremlin Denials Fly

By Yulia Latynina

The people in charge of foreign policy seem to have developed severe short-term memory loss. In the run-up to the U.S. presidential election, President Vladimir Putin announced that a vote for the opponents of George W. Bush was nothing less than a vote for international terrorism. But after Bush won, Putin gave an Iron Curtain-style speech in India directed against the architects of a unipolar world.

It's a sad thing. Had Senator John Kerry beaten Bush last month, it would have been a victory for international terrorism. But Bush won, scoring a victory for a unipolar world.

During the hostage crisis in Beslan, official Moscow loudly insisted that Arab terrorists were involved. The embassies of Arab countries that have enough problems with terrorism back home demanded an explanation. And the Federal Security Service was forced to explain that no Arabs had actually taken part in the terrorist attack in Beslan, and that the Chechen and Ingush terrorists had not conducted negotiations by telephone with Arab countries.

Imagine how Russia would have reacted if the United States had publicly announced that Russians as well as Arabs were involved in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, and then privately recanted, admitting in a diplomatic memo that no Russians had taken part.

The Kremlin's pronouncements offended the entire Middle East, except for Israel. At least we could have been consistent. But a month later Russia was the only non-Arab country to vote in favor of a failed UN Security Council resolution that would have barred Israel from launching preemptive strikes on terrorist bases on Palestinian territory. Just last Friday Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov reiterated Russia's right to launch preemptive strikes against terrorists anywhere in the world.


Following this logic, there may be Arab terrorists in Beslan, but in Palestine there are only freedom fighters battling Zionism.

Someone has removed the hard drive from Russian foreign policy, leaving only the RAM. Without any long-term memory, there's no point talking about foreign policy strategy or goals. Russian foreign policy boils down to one person's reaction to a specific set of stimuli.

The Kremlin had to explain to the people how the terrorist attack in Beslan could have happened. They should have replied: "Because we're still at war in Chechnya -- a war in which 250,000 Chechens have died." But this would have amounted to an admission that the official line on Chechnya -- where a "peace process," not a war, is under way -- was a lie. The Kremlin therefore opted to blame "international terrorism."

Then they had to explain how Russia lost the presidential election in Ukraine. No other outcome was possible, in fact, because there's only one sure way to win an election in another country: send in the tanks. Otherwise, one of two things happens. The side that desperately appealed for your support loses the election, or it wins and wants nothing more to do with you.

To say that we lost because we had backed an utterly corrupt regime would amount to an admission of error. It's much simpler to blame the whole thing on the CIA.

But there are limits to what intelligence operatives can do. They can help you murder a presidential candidate by poisoning him, for example. They can help you do many other things, like stage a coup. But they can't pull off a popular revolution.

The Kremlin has no memory and it has no foreign policy. The Kremlin just denies that it is to blame. Since it makes a lot of mistakes, it issues a lot of denials. And with so many denials flying around, they're bound to contradict one another.

[princessflower]

France knows more about this than anyone.