Yesterday President Medvedev put rather a damper on Washington’s Thanksgiving celebrations with the announcement that Russia would not tolerate the White House’s long-planned missile defense shield in Europe.  The Kremlin has always made its objections to the system known, but yesterday the President adopted a surprisingly stringent tone, pledging to deploy deterrents and threatening that Russia would consider backing out of START if the plans were to go ahead.

This sudden burst of unabashed hawkishness is somewhat uncharacteristic of the mild-mannered President.  Medvedev has widely been seen as the friendly face of the Russian reset, enjoying personal ties with fellow lawyer Barack Obama, whilst Putin has always remained rather more chilly and Soviet in his approach to the US.  What we can note however is that since the announcement that Putin would return to the presidency was made, the current President has faded into the background of an election campaign that seems to be designed to showcase the popularity of the national leader, to the embarrassment of his obselete tandem partner.  Perhaps, as CNN’s Security Clearance blog suggests below, Medvedev’s stab at NATO is nothing more than a last-ditch attempt to give the Russian electorate something to remember him by, beyond unfulfilled reform promises and a dodgy badminton video: