Threats, insults, and Kremlin 'robots': How Russian diplomacy died under Putin
Threats, insults, and Kremlin 'robots': How Russian diplomacy died under Putin
Russian diplomacy is no longer about co-operation but "putting Westerners in their place", say ex-Kremlin insiders.
Russia's diplomats were once a key part of President Putin's foreign policy strategy. But that has all changed.
In the years leading up to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, diplomats lost their authority, their role reduced to echoing the Kremlin's aggressive rhetoric.
BBC Russian asks former diplomats, as well as ex-Kremlin and White House insiders, how Russian diplomacy broke down.
It's actually hilarious how millennials are refusing to shit themselves in fear over hollow threats of nuclear apocalypse like the boomers did for decades.
Like, I'm going to die a slow death from microplastic poisoning. My kids will slowly cook to death as the earth warms. Instant death by fireball sounds pretty nice.
The young scions of our age find themselves in a curious juxtaposition to their forbearers, who once trembled at the thought of world-ending calamities unleashed by the fiery engines of the Autarch's weaponry. These newer souls scoff at such fears, deeming them hollow echoes of a past era, perhaps because they have been raised in the shadow of subtler, yet equally inexorable, dooms. To them, the threat of slow ruin wrought by the invisible maladies that pollute our waters and air, or the gradual inferno that the Sun's ever-increasing wrath promises to our world, hold more tangible dread. For these youths, the prospect of instantaneous annihilation in a blaze of cosmic fire seems almost a reprieve, a quick severance of life's Gordian knot, sparing them the prolonged suffering promised by the ills that plague our slowly deteriorating Urth.
Pretty good
Your sentiment is not, in fact, new. It existed back then as well.
millennials are refusing to shit themselves in fear
Started good...
Like, I’m going to die a slow death from microplastic poisoning. My kids will slowly cook to death as the earth warms. Instant death by fireball sounds pretty nice.
...And then you wrote this. I see contradiction.
I'm really sorry to piss on your little eco-statement here, but climate change fears are relevant for decadent rich societies only. Most of the actual humanity is still more concerned with poverty, illiteracy, hunger, epidemics and genocide.
But I agree that those threats are hollow now, because people who'd never actually fulfill them are voicing them. Mostly thieves from the Russian "elite".
In 1984 the threat would be voiced by bureaucratic leaders of a block occupying large part of the globe which was more or less designed from the ground up for playing "Global Thermonuclear War", you can see than even in the way Soviet military in its every component was being developed starting from the 50s. Those leaders were not even that corrupt, usually (well, such famous Politburo members as Boris Yeltsin and Heydar Aliyev obviously were, but still), what they owned officially and unofficially is upper middle class level, in Western terms.
So maybe boomers were not so cowardly, yes?
Was it ever alive to begin with?
Soviet diplomacy was actually pretty strong.
It was at least less cringe
Ah yes, Russian diplomacy is so weak that pretty much all of the world outside the west is aligned with Russia
- https://ecfr.eu/publication/united-west-divided-from-the-rest-global-public-opinion-one-year-into-russias-war-on-ukraine/
- https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/27/the-global-south-refuses-pressure-to-side-with-the-west-on-russia/
- https://usrussiaaccord.org/acura-viewpoint-krishen-mehta-the-ukraine-war-viewed-from-the-global-south/
- https://archive.is/2023.02.23-211202/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/23/world/russia-ukraine-geopolitics.html
- https://archive.ph/4kbWG
- https://www.eiu.com/n/russias-pockets-of-support-are-growing-in-the-developing-world/
Diplomacy isn't just cozying up to nations that are your friends and and insulting others, it's having cordial relations with all nations.
cozying up to nations that are your friends and and insulting others
You've literally described western diplomacy here.
No one does this, though?
If that's diplomacy, then we're living in a world of the opposite.
Haven't you heard? The West IS the world!
Is Putin paying you per link or something?
Russian diplomacy is actually pretty good with many successes, but to notice that you should look at something other than USA and EU.
my source is I made it the fuck up
Why exactly do you think that pretty much the entire Global South has not placed significant sanctions on Russia? Why do you think so many countries want to join BRICS?
Must be because of poor Russian diplo. Meanwhile, African countries are literally committing coups for their government staying too close to European colonial powers.
Russian diplomacy is just as good as it's military, and space program. A complete joke.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Russian diplomats were a key part of Mr Putin's team, helping resolve territorial disputes with China and Norway, leading talks on deeper co-operation with European countries, and ensuring a peaceful transition after a revolution in Georgia.
But as Mr Putin became more powerful and experienced, he became increasingly convinced he had all the answers and that diplomats were unnecessary, says Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, who is living in exile in Berlin.
A year later, when Russia invaded Georgia, Moscow's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reportedly swore at his UK counterpart, David Miliband, asking: "Who are you to lecture me?"
In 2009, Mr Lavrov and the then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed a giant red "reset button" in relations, and the two countries seemed to be building co-operation - especially on security issues.
But it soon became obvious to US officials that their Russian counterparts were simply parroting Mr Putin's growing anti-Western views, says Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor to former US President Barack Obama.
Mr Bondarev, who used to work for Moscow's mission to the UN in Geneva, recalls one meeting where Russia blocked all proposed initiatives, prompting colleagues from Switzerland to complain.
The original article contains 1,612 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 88%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
What? Did someone put polonium in its tee?
did someone put polonium in its tee?
No but that’s how Putin kept trump in line, polonium laced tees ready at a moments notice for his many impromptu golf trips. Must be what Kishner used that secret Russian channel for
