"The warriors recalled bygone days and the battles they lost together". Vladimir Putin, Russian Prime Minister.
On Thursday evening, Vladimir Putin commented on the meeting between Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko by paraphrasing lines from a poem by Pushkin. Putin was speaking in Yalta where he flew to meet with Ukraine's number two, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (that the two meetings were held simultaneously was not accidental). Speaking at the press conference, he said "I have no idea what our colleagues were up to (leaving it to the audience to guess what a Ukrainian and a Georgian could be doing together - M.S.) I think the two presidents have something to talk about, to discuss and remember. ‘The warriors recalled bygone days and the battles they lost together.'" He said Yushchenko and Saakashvili should hold a meeting without ties: "Just to make sure the guest doesn't eat Yushchenko's tie." Eye-witnesses report that Tymoshenko, who was standing by Putin's side, grunted and smirked, probably recalling that Saakashvili was chewing on his tie while preparing to deliver a TV address during the Russian-Georgian war (as he was unaware that the cameras were on).
Saakashvili of course remembers that Putin had even harsher words for him: Putin promised, in a conversation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to hang Saakashvili by his balls. Later, during his live video conference with members of the Russian public, he was asked whether it was true that he had promised to "hang Saakashvili by one of his body parts" and he replied: "Why only one?"
"Putin publicly vowed to hang me by a certain part of the body that every man needs," Saakashvili said in a more moderate reaction. "Now he is talking about my tie. It is good that he has risen to the tie. I feel safer that way." Then he moved on from body parts to political matters: "On a serious note, we are moving toward Europe, and they want to bring us back into the Soviet Union. My people do not want to be in the Soviet Union anymore."
In the context of the Ukrainian political situation, Putin's quip drew this reaction from the chief of Yushchenko's secretariat: "It is inadmissible for the prime minister of an independent state and a presidential candidate to demonstrate such contempt of her own country. If we have such leaders we may end up as a Ukrainian borderland and not as a Ukrainian state." The message was clear: Tymoshenko should have refrained from grunting and smirking.
Putin, Yushchenko, Saakashvili, and Tymoshenko - it's great that we have them. They ensure that we will never be bored, except that sometimes they leave an unpleasant aftertaste.
Maxim Solus