Biden Russia Remarks Hit A Nerve In Moscow

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Vice President Joe Biden speaks with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outside the Oval Office, June 10, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Vice President Joe Biden speaks with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outside the Oval Office, June 10, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Vice President Joe Biden just loves a microphone and a camera. Too bad he isn’t as intimate with discretion. President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton can’t be too enamored with his candor either.

Most Russian newspapers put Biden’s interview on their front pages Monday, with headlines casting doubt on Washington’s commitment to forge a more constructive relationship with Moscow.

“Joe Biden unexpectedly returned to the rhetoric of the previous Bush administration,” the newspaper Kommersant wrote.

Moskovsky Komsomolets said Biden, with his “boorish openness,” showed what the Obama administration really thinks about Russia. “We should respond to the Yankees in the same way,” the newspaper wrote. “Any other language, unfortunately or fortunately, they do not understand.”

The papers jumped on Biden’s comments about Russia’s demographic and economic problems.

“They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they’re in a situation where the world is changing before them and they’re clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable,” Biden said in the interview.

Some newspapers and commentators noted that Russians say the same things about themselves. The question, they said, was why Biden made the comments so quickly after this month’s summit by Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev, and after Biden’s own trip last week to Ukraine and Georgia, former Soviet republics whose growing ties to the West are deeply resented in Moscow.
via Biden Russia Remarks Hit A Nerve In Moscow.