Quotable notes

"Under President Putin, Russia has refused to comply with the terms of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. Russian troops occupy parts of Georgia and Moldova ... Russian agents are working to bring Ukraine further into Moscow's orbit. Russian support sustains Europe's last dictatorship in Belarus. And Moscow has ... enforced its stranglehold on energy supplies into Latvia in order to squeeze the democratic government in Riga.

"... undemocratic behavior and threats to the sovereignty and liberty of her neighbors will not profit Russia ... but will exclude her from the company of Western democracies."

- Sen. John McCain (R- Ariz.), speaking at the 40th Wehrkunde Conference in Munich, which is dedicated to security policy, as reported by columnist William Safire, writing in the February 9 issue of The New York Times.

"This city is no longer the venue of appeasement.

"At an annual security conference here [Munich] on the eve of NATO's seven-state expansion, Moscow's neo-imperialist defense minister threatened to back out of an agreement limiting the size of his armed forces on Russia's European front.

"[Russian Defense Minister] Sergei Ivanov's bluff was immediately called by U.S. Sen. John McCain. The Arizonan had accused Putin's regime of a "creeping coup" against democracy within Russia, as well as a campaign to intimidate and reassert control over states - from the Baltics to Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine - that our victory in the cold war had liberated from Soviet rule."

- Columnist William Safire, writing in the February 9 issue of The New York Times, about the Munich conference on security.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, February 22, 2004, No. 8, Vol. LXXII

| Home Page |