In its weekly review of events in Chechnya and the North Caucasus, Prague Watchdog discusses the future visit of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi to Chechnya’s capital city of Grozny.
Day: November 6, 2008
Pre-emptive strike
RFE/RL’s Brian Whitmore, on Medvedev’s missile announcement:
Speaking to the French AFP news agency, the respected Moscow-based defense analyst Aleksandr Goltz called the move “an attempt to inflict maximum damage on U.S.-Russian relations.” Goltz went on to call the move “a cardinal change” in Moscow’s posture toward Europe.
“I have no rational explanation for why this came less than 24 hours after the election of a new US president,” Golts said. “Even in Soviet times they refrained from such harsh reactions.”