Russia's missile pullback

Posted By Joshua Keating Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - 1:41 PM Share

Russian officials may be walking back a bit on earlier hints that they were suspending the deployment of missiles to the Kaliningrad region in response to Barack Obama's more conciliatory tone. Voice of America is reporting that senior Russian military officials have called the reports "premature":

They said Russia has not taken any practical steps to deploy the short-range Iskander missiles and therefore one can not speak of a suspension.

The earlier reports stated the Russia had made its decision after a phone call between Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama in which the U.S. president promised to reexamine the U.S. missile shield program on its merits.

Previous statements indicate that Obama isn't a big fan of missile defense, but it would be hard for him to scrap the program entirely without looking weak and angering the Czech Republic and Poland, who have signed treaties to host the system.

The two leaders will likely discuss the issue in person at the G20 summit in April, but an unspoken arrangement in which the U.S. is in no particulary hurry to set up the shield and Russia is no particular hurry to set up its missiles without any options being taken off the table, might be the best conceivable outcome.

Photo: DMITRY ASTAKHOV/AFP/Getty Images

EXPLORE:MILITARY, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, RUSSIA
 

KROTHROCK

2:56 PM ET

January 28, 2009

Another Kremlin Win

This will play out to be another smart Kremlin move. They knew Obama would be less keen to pursue missile defense in Eastern Europe, so they arrange a hawkish speech on the day of his election threatening a military buildup response.

Now, if Obama shies away from the plan (perhaps not scrapping it altogether, as the author here mentions), Medvedev and Putin can turn to the Russian people and show them that they faced down the United States and took another great leap in the reaffirmation of Russia as a resurgent power. If Obama decides to go ahead with the plan (something that seems fairly unlikely, given his public statements to date and his apparent aim to reengage Russia for the sake of victory in Afghanistan), Moscow will put its rockets in Kaliningrad and shout from its news stations that the nation is besieged and misunderstood.

I'm sure they have a lot of cost-cutting stock footage to manage the latter media option.

 

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