Tag Archives: Russia

Russian president asked to investigate alien claims

Posted on by
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a Russian businessman and ...

‘A Russian MP has asked President Dmitry Medvedev to investigate claims by a regional president that he has met aliens on board a spaceship.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the leader of the southern region of Kalmykia, made his claim in a television interview.

MP Andre Lebedev is not just asking whether Mr Ilyumzhinov is fit to govern.

He is also concerned that, if he was abducted, he may have revealed details about his job and state secrets.’ (BBC News)

Related:

Putin to Suspend Pact With NATO

Posted on by
“President Vladimir V. Putin said Thursday that Russia would suspend its compliance with a treaty on conventional arms in Europe that was forged at the end of the cold war, opening a fresh and intense dispute in the souring relations between NATO and the Kremlin.

The announcement …underscored the Kremlin’s anger at the United States for proposing a new missile defense system in Europe, which the Bush administration insists is meant to counter potential threats from North Korea and Iran.” (New York Times )

I would quibble with the Times calling this an issue between NATO and Russia. It seems to me that Putin’s enmity, and the responsibility for potentially restarting the Cold War, should be laid squarely at the feet of our national-embarrassment-in-chief in Washington. This may well prove to be one of the most enduring facets of the Bush legacy, along with the destruction of Iraq, the squandering of most of the international community’s goodwill toward the US, the sabotaging of a consensus against climate change, irreparable domestic polarization, and the visitation of the burdens of his fiscal irresponsibility on a generation to come in the US. Am I forgetting anything?