Staring Down The Russian Bear

Leading presidential contender Ron Paul (Moonbat-Texas) hasn't linked this to Bush foreign policy blowback -- yet. However, the week is still young.

Curbing "Russian Aggression"
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband arrived at the House of Commons with his report on relations with Russia exactly on schedule, at 15:30 London Time. His mood was decisive: the evening before, in a televised interview with the BBC, he had declared that the British government is "considering seriously all of our options" in relation to Russia.In the same interview, the 42-year-old foreign secretary noted that the situation is something of a paradox, since economic ties between Britain and Russia have never been stronger and more flourishing.

In his speech before Parliament, Mr. Miliband dispensed with a lengthy history of the case, since the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and the demand from the British Crown Prosecution Service that Russia hand over suspect Andrei Lugovoi are certainly some of the most high-profile stories in the British press. "Our aims are clear: first to advance our judicial process, second to bring home to the Russian government the consequences of their failure to cooperate, and third to emphasize our commitment to promoting the safety of British citizens and visitors," stressed Mr. Miliband instead.

What happened to the multilateralism, international institutions and new alliance of opportunity claptrap being preached Friday?

Britain's first sanction against Russia involves the introduction of visa restrictions. The press service of the British Embassy in Moscow explained to Kommersant that a new procedure will be developed for reviewing visa applications submitted by the Russian government. In other words, according to UK Embassy spokesman Anjoum Nourani, these restrictions will not affect ordinary Russians, whose documents will be reviewed as before. Documents from Russian officials, however, will be subjected to special checks that will make it more difficult for representatives of the Russian government to travel to Britain.

That'll teach 'em!!!

In addition, the raft of measures proposed by David Miliband includes the suspension of talks aimed at liberalizing the visa regime. As of June 1, 2007, an agreement between Russia and the EU that simplifies the visa-application process for citizens of Russia and the European Schengen Zone countries has been in force, but the UK was not party to this agreement and has been carrying on separate talks with Russia. Now, in the wake of Russia's refusal to hand over Andrei Lugovoi, these negotiations have been closed. The British authorities were also planning to create an independent processing center in Moscow to expedite the granting of visas to Russian citizens, but David Miliband has since announced that this idea has been abandoned.

Mr. Miliband also mentioned the implementation of yet another anticipated sanction against Russia in his speech before Parliament: four Russian diplomats will be expelled from Great Britain within the next few days. The British press has been writing for days about the possibility that such action would be taken, and a source in diplomatic circles told Kommersant that a list has already been compiled in London of possible candidates for expulsion. The British authorities have an idea of which of the employees of the Russian Embassy are intelligence officers, and the current scandal is being used as a pretext to ask them to leave the country. Expulsions of diplomats are not rare occurrences, but usually they take place well out of the public eye. If an employee of an embassy abroad is suspected of intelligence activities, the authorities of the host country simply recommend that the other country's diplomatic mission send that person home. Only rarely do such incidents grow into notorious spy scandals: the last time Russian diplomats were ejected from London to make a point was in 1996.

Most assuredly, Soviet Russian president Vladimir Paranoid is laughing his ass off over the milquetoast now in residence at #10 and his cabinet ministers.

Send Prince Charles to negotiate with Putie and you just might get everything you want -- posthaste.

There's more.