Russia Still Unhappy after the Bruising from Biden

It looks like this hasn’t gone away yet, as the Russian newspapers opened the week with several front page stories on the Biden comments (though not so much about the Hillary response):

From the Associated Press:

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.

Sergei Rogov, director of the government-funded USA and Canada Institute, was quoted in Kommersant as saying the interview was aimed in part at addressing criticism in the U.S. that the Obama administration was too soft on Russia.

Some commentators said it was wrong to see Biden as diverging from the policy set by Obama, as suggested by Prikhodko.

Bidenwas most likely expressing Washington’s “Plan B,” said Vladimir Milov,a former deputy energy minister who now heads his own think tank. Ifthe Kremlin proves unwilling to compromise, the United States waslikely to reduce relations to a minimum and push Moscow to theperiphery of world politics, Milov wrote in the online Gazeta.ru.

U.S.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an apparent effort Sunday toreassure Moscow, saying on NBC “Meet the Press” that the administrationconsiders Russia to be a “great power.”

“Every country faceschallenges,” she said. “We have our challenges, Russia has theirchallenges. There are certain issues that Russia has to deal with onits own.”