Word: russian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Alexander Rahr, a Russian expert at Germany's Council on Foreign Relations, suggests that the business lobby played a large role in Merkel's "dramatic" climbdown from her outright endorsement of Georgia's NATO membership in Tbilisi last month to her softer stance in Brussels. John Kornblum, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany who is now the chairman of the German unit of investment bank Lazard, says that while he opposes sanctions himself, Germany's tolerant attitude toward Russia goes even deeper. "Germans are very, very ready to take the Russians' side," he says. "This crisis will make the appeasers...
...Britain, whose relations with Russia have been in a chill since the 2006 murder in London of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, also took a robust tone after Russia's invasion of Georgia, though it was David Cameron, the Conservative opposition leader, who raced to Tbilisi in mid-August to blast the Russians while Brown vacationed uncomfortably in Scotland. British Foreign Minister David Miliband took the baton and traveled to Ukraine, another country deeply worried about Moscow's expansionist ambitions. Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, inhabited mostly by ethnic Russians and home to the Russian Black Sea fleet...
...Brussels for a spirited response to Moscow. Along with several other leaders, he put his weight behind the suspension of negotiations over an often delayed E.U.-Russia partnership agreement intended to ease commerce and economic cooperation. "Yesterday was a strong demonstration of European unity in the face of Russian transgression of core international values," Miliband told TIME. "There was not only strong support for Georgia but a profound reassessment of the right way to deal with Russia. Europeans are committed to territorial integrity and rule-based governance, and these principles have been violated by Russia...
...Moscow responded with cool disdain to the E.U.'s deliberations. The Russian Foreign Ministry called the results "sufficiently predictable." It deplored the suspension of the trade talks, but suggested that Russia had grown accustomed to "artificial obstacles on the path to this document." On the eve of the summit, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev told Sarkozy - not for the first time - that Russian troops intended to pull out of the buffer zones in Georgia proper, raising the possibility that the ultimatum for the suspension of talks would quickly be rendered moot. "The majority of E.U. countries have manifested a responsible approach...
...After the Soviet Union collapsed, recall, NATO membership was extended to the East European satellite states of the Soviet Union and to the three former Soviet republics on the Baltic. In 1999, NATO, ignoring Russian objections, went to war with Russia's ally Serbia over Kosovo. Just this year, most Western powers recognized Kosovo's independence, and - while the issue remains unresolved - at the very least considered eventual NATO membership for another two former Soviet republics, Georgia and Ukraine. So the question becomes: Has the West needlessly provoked Russia for more than a decade? Is it somehow to blame...