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Soviet union upper volta with nukes5/29/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() In a sign of the side-lining of Russia, Washington says its plans for an anti-missile shield over the US have nothing to do with the Soviet nuclear arsenal but are aimed against future long-range rockets from such countries as North Korea. The most influential foreign affairs adviser in another former Soviet republic, Azerbaijan, said yesterday that his country wanted to see US and Turkish bases on its soil.ĭespairingly, the popular Moscow daily Moskovsky Komsomolets said Ukraine, the biggest ex-Soviet state after Russia, was turning into a Nato ally - and there was little Russia could do to stop it. It has taken a long time for Russia's neighbours to accept that its armed forces are barely capable of defending Russia, let alone mounting overseas operations, but yesterday the commander of the armed forces of tiny ex-Soviet Estonia, one-hundredth the size of its neighbour, admitted Russia no longer posed a threat. Now Russia's anger is seen as posturing, a predictable inconvenience. Once, Russia's furious responses to each move - right up to withdrawing its ambassadors from Washington and London over Iraq - would have set alarm bells ringing in the West. In the past two months Washington has issued a stream of policy challenges to Moscow - bombing Iraq, threatening to bomb Serbia, trying to rewrite a 27-year-old cold war treaty banning the building of anti-missile defences around cities, and slapping sanctions on Moscow institutes accused of helping Iran build weapons. ![]() Now, he said, the talk was of plain realism - the partnership had gone. Sergei Rogov, the head of Moscow's US and Canada Institute, noted how the official US terms for relations with Russia have changed from "strategic partnership" to "pragmatic partnership" to "realistic partnership". But while in the cold war years this was simply a propaganda clich, it is now treated as reality, necessitating concrete actions," the paper said. "Russia is now almost officially declared to be 'Upper Volta with rockets'. The Commersant Daily newspaper said Mr Clinton had effectively announced a new US policy towards Russia: not support, but neutralisation. Russian commentators pounced on the fact that in his State of the Union address last week, President Bill Clinton mentioned Russia only as a dangerous storehouse of badly maintained nuclear weapons. ![]()
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