RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – July 14, 2008
TODAY: Medvedev vetoes Zimbabwe sanctions; British press attacks Russia over spying allegations and possible nuclear weapons plans; in-depth look at corruption; Reverend Philip Miles returns to the US; Communist Party still fighting; Georgia vows to shoot down Russian fighter jets. Dmitry Medvedev is Russia’s “first post-Soviet leader”, says one British journalist, taking Russia’s side against “creeping expansion of the American military empire.” Another defends Russia against “furious public finger-pointing” over its refusal to vote for United Nations’ sanctions for Zimbabwe, which has drawn criticism from the US and UK. The US ambassador to the UN said, “the U-turn in the Russian position is particularly surprising and disturbing … [and] raises questions about its reliability as a G8 partner,” and the British foreign secretary called the veto “incomprehensible”, although one article defends the move, saying that sanctions are “ineffective”. One journalist speculates that new Russian allegations of British spying are just “part of the usual tit for tat”. Another is concerned that “Russia is thinking of aiming nuclear weapons at western Europe for the first time since the end of the cold war.”