person:vladimir v. putin

Une énorme panne électrique prive l’ensemble de l’Argentine et de l’Uruguay de courant pendant plusieurs heures. Survenue à 7h du matin dimanche, alors que la consommation était basse, À 15h30 le courant était rétabli pour 56% des Argentins. La cause est inconnue pour le moment pour un système électrique très robuste disposant d’un surcroît de capacité aussi bien de production que de transport de l’énergie électrique.

Argentina y Uruguay recuperan energía parcialmente tras apagón masivo
▻http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/mundo/argentina-uruguay-recuperan-energia-parcialmente-tras-apagon-masivo_285

Los servicios de energía fueron restablecidos en más de 50% en Argentina y Uruguay, luego del apagón masivo que dejó sin electricidad a los dos países este domingo en la mañana.

Pasadas las 15:30, hora local, el servicio había vuelto para 56% de los usuarios en Argentina, según el ministro de Energía, Gustavo Lopetegui. En tanto, la empresa UTE, de Uruguay, indicó que los servicios se reanudaron en 75% de ese país.

Las autoridades argentinas aún desconocen las causas del corte eléctrico.

“Son fallas que ocurren con asiduidad. Lo extraordinario es la cadena de acontecimientos posteriores que causaron la desconexión total”, dijo Lopetegui en una rueda de prensa, al explicar que la caída “se produce de forma automática para proteger el sistema”.

“No tenemos información en este momento de por qué ocurrió. No descartamos ninguna posibilidad, pero un ciberataque no figura entre las alternativas primarias que se están considerando”, añadió.

El corte se originó a las 7:07, hora local, por una falla del sistema de transporte desde Yacyretá, la represa binacional en la frontera con Paraguay.

“El sistema eléctrico argentino es muy robusto, con capacidad de exceso tanto en generación como en transporte”, enfatizó Lopetegui, al referir que la falla se originó en un momento de baja demanda, pues es “un domingo y no hace ni mucho calor ni mucho frío”.

Es la primera vez que ocurre un apagón que alcanza a la totalidad de Argentina y Uruguay. En Paraguay se registraron cortes momentáneos y localizados.

Argentina, con 44 millones de habitantes, y Uruguay, con 3,4 millones, comparten un sistema de interconexión eléctrico centrado en la represa binacional de Salto Grande, ubicada a aproximadamente 450 km al norte de Buenos Aires y casi 500 km al norte de Montevideo.

Venezuela Military Backs Maduro, as Moscow Warns U.S. Not to Intervene - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/world/americas/russia-venezuela-trump-pence.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/25/world/25venezuela3/25venezuela3-facebookJumbo.jpg

CARACAS, Venezuela — The leader of Venezuela’s armed forces declared loyalty to President Nicolás Maduro on Thursday and said the opposition’s effort to replace him with a transitional government amounted to an attempted coup.

The pronouncement by the defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, came a day after an opposition lawmaker proclaimed himself the country’s rightful leader during nationwide antigovernment protests and pleaded with the armed forces to abandon Mr. Maduro.

The defense minister’s declaration was a setback for the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, whose claim to legitimacy has been backed by a number of countries, including the United States. In a further blow to the opposition, Russia warned the United States on Thursday against meddling in Venezuela, a longtime Kremlin ally.

“Any external intervention is very dangerous,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, told reporters in Moscow. “We consider the attempt to usurp the top power in Venezuela as going against the foundations and principles of the international law.”

Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-president-trump.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/15/us/15dc-trumpnato-1/merlin_141156909_cfa4e9a4-a737-4809-aae5-718916f5b72c-facebookJumbo.jpg

There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.

Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.

At the time, Mr. Trump’s national security team, including Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, scrambled to keep American strategy on track without mention of a withdrawal that would drastically reduce Washington’s influence in Europe and could embolden Russia for decades.

Now, the president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides, and an F.B.I. investigation into the administration’s Russia ties.

A move to withdraw from the alliance, in place since 1949, “would be one of the most damaging things that any president could do to U.S. interests,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama.

“It would destroy 70-plus years of painstaking work across multiple administrations, Republican and Democratic, to create perhaps the most powerful and advantageous alliance in history,” Ms. Flournoy said in an interview. “And it would be the wildest success that Vladimir Putin could dream of.”

Retired Adm. James G. Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, said an American withdrawal from the alliance would be “a geopolitical mistake of epic proportion.”

“Even discussing the idea of leaving NATO — let alone actually doing so — would be the gift of the century for Putin,” Admiral Stavridis said.

Senior Trump administration officials discussed the internal and highly sensitive efforts to preserve the military alliance on condition of anonymity.

After the White House was asked for comment on Monday, a senior administration official pointed to Mr. Trump’s remarks in July when he called the United States’ commitment to NATO “very strong” and the alliance “very important.” The official declined to comment further.

American national security officials believe that Russia has largely focused on undermining solidarity between the United States and Europe after it annexed Crimea in 2014. Its goal was to upend NATO, which Moscow views as a threat.

Comme on le voit au début et à la fin de cet extrait, si les #USA quittent l’#Otan ce sera pas mal la faute de la #Russie de #"Poutine

Hacked European Cables Reveal a World of Anxiety About Trump, Russia and Iran
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/politics/european-diplomats-cables-hacked.html

Hackers infiltrated the European Union’s diplomatic communications network for years, downloading thousands of cables that reveal concerns about an unpredictable Trump administration and struggles to deal with Russia and China and the risk that Iran would revive its nuclear program. In one cable, European diplomats described a meeting between President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Helsinki, Finland, as “successful (at least for Putin).” Another cable, written after a (...)

#NSA #spyware #écoutes #hacking

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/12/19/us/politics/19dc-cables-print-promo/19dc-cables-print-promo-facebookJumbo-v5.jpg

Les interprètes russes et américains, seuls présents à la réunion à huis clos, sont tombés gravement malades quelques heures seulement après le sommet.

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*nTSyW4kUIcW63EAy1PscNw.jpeg

►https://extranewsfeed.com/two-translators-at-trump-putin-meeting-found-with-bellyful-of-neuroto

“Doctors tell us that both have a bellyful of Novichok, a very dangerous neurotoxin. We have no idea yet how they came in contact with Novichok.”

Le personnel médical à Helsinki ne sait pas encore si les deux interprètes survivront. Les traducteurs du monde entier se mobilisent pour prier pour eux dans plus de 150 langues.

 :-)))
Allan Ishac.

Russia Moves to Soften Domestic Violence Law - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/world/europe/russia-domestic-violence.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/01/26/world/26Russia-video/26Russia-video-facebookJumbo.jpg

MOSCOW — Russian lawmakers on Wednesday moved to decriminalize some forms of domestic battery for first-time offenders who do not do serious physical harm to their victims.

Members of the State Duma passed the controversial amendment to the Russian criminal code in its second reading, which essentially assures it will go to President Vladimir V. Putin for his signature.

#décadence #violences_conjugales décriminalisée

En fait je cherche un tag qui regrouperait tout ce ui, en ce moement, nous ramène en arrière (Ces lois scélérates, Trump, Valls, Fillon, la Hongrie, etc...). Je ne sais pas si décadence est la meilleure alternative ou s’il faut trouver autre chose.

How Russia Often Benefits When Julian Assange Reveals the West’s Secrets - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/europe/wikileaks-julian-assange-russia.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/08/30/world/asssange-web1/asssange-web1-facebookJumbo.jpg

Notably absent from Mr. Assange’s analysis, however, was criticism of another world power, Russia, or its president, Vladimir V. Putin, who has hardly lived up to WikiLeaks’ ideal of transparency. Mr. Putin’s government has cracked down hard on dissent — spying on, jailing, and, critics charge, sometimes assassinating opponents while consolidating control over the news media and internet. If Mr. #Assange appreciated the irony of the moment — denouncing censorship in an interview on Russia Today, the Kremlin-controlled English-language propaganda channel — it was not readily apparent.

Now, Mr. Assange and #WikiLeaks are back in the spotlight, roiling the geopolitical landscape with new disclosures and a promise of more to come.

In July, the organization released nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails suggesting that the party had conspired with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to undermine her primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders. Mr. Assange — who has been openly critical of Mrs. Clinton — has promised further disclosures that could upend her campaign against the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump. Separately, WikiLeaks announced that it would soon release some of the crown jewels of American intelligence: a “pristine” set of cyberspying codes.

Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html

On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.

And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

NATO Ratchets Up Missile Defense Despite Russian Criticism - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/world/europe/nato-russia-poland.html

NATO’s European missile defense system goes live on Thursday when a base in Romania becomes operational. The next day, Poland is scheduled to break ground on its NATO missile-defense base.

The decision by the United States and its allies in Eastern Europe to proceed with ballistic missile defense in the face of increasingly loud Russian criticism is an important stage in the alliance’s new stance toward Moscow.

Those deployments will be coupled this spring with major military exercises in Poland and the Baltics, with significant American participation and a beefed-up rapid reaction force of up to 5,000 troops.

Altogether, said Derek Chollet, a former United States assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, “There will be a quite robust display of military power in Europe and allied resolve, and hopefully Moscow will see it for what it is, an alliance improving its capabilities.”
[…]
Talk of “strategic partnership” is gone; instead, there are calls to abandon the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997, which spoke of shared values and a commitment to peace. There is less emphasis on finding “common ground” with Russia than on setting clear limits.

The intention in Warsaw is to move from “reassurance” of eastern NATO allies to “deterrence” of Russia. That means more troops and equipment, longer deployments, bigger exercises and a “persistent” presence of NATO and American troops in countries like Poland and the Baltics.
[…]
How will Russia react? President Vladimir V. Putin views NATO as encircling Russia to limit its influence. Moscow argues that the only possible target of NATO’s missile defenses is Russia, now that Iran has agreed to limit its nuclear program.

Race for Latest Class of Nuclear Arms Threatens to Revive Cold War
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/science/atom-bomb-nuclear-weapons-hgv-arms-race-russia-china.html

American officials largely blame the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, saying his intransigence has stymied efforts to build on a 2010 arms control treaty and further shrink the arsenals of the two largest nuclear powers. Some blame the Chinese, who are looking for a technological edge to keep the United States at bay. And some blame the United States itself for speeding ahead with a nuclear “modernization” that, in the name of improving safety and reliability, risks throwing fuel on the fire.

#armes #nucléaire

Survey Points to Challenges NATO Faces Over Russia - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/world/europe/survey-points-to-challenges-nato-faces-over-russia.html

As NATO faces a resurgent Russian military, a substantial number of Europeans do not believe that their own countries should rush to defend an ally against attack, according to a comprehensive survey to be made public on Wednesday.

NATO’s charter states that an attack against one member should be considered an attack against all, but the survey points to the challenges the alliance faces in trying to maintain its cohesion in the face of an increasingly aggressive Russia.

“°At least half of Germans, French and Italians say their country should not use military force to defend a NATO ally if attacked by Russia,°” the Pew Research Center said it found in its survey, which is based on interviews in 10 nations.
[…]
Not all of the data in the Pew report is bad news for NATO. According to the study, residents of most NATO countries still believe that the United States would come to their defense. Americans and Canadians also largely say that their countries should act militarily to defend a NATO ally, and nearly half of the British, Polish and Spanish respondents say the same.
[…]
But the study highlights sharp differences within the alliance’s ranks. Of all those surveyed, Poles were most alarmed by Moscow’s muscle flexing, with 70 percent saying that Russia was a major military threat.

Germany, a critical American ally in the effort to forge a Ukraine peace settlement, was at the other end of the spectrum. Only 38 percent of Germans said that Russia was a danger to neighboring countries aside from Ukraine, and only 29 percent blamed Russia for the violence in Ukraine.

Consequently, 58 percent of Germans do not believe that their country should use force to defend another NATO ally. Just 19 percent of Germans say NATO weapons should be sent to the Ukrainian government to help it better contend with Russian and separatist attacks.

Support for the NATO alliance in Germany was tallied at 55 percent, down from 73 percent in 2009. Those results are influenced by Germans in the eastern part of the country, who are more than twice as likely as western Germans to have confidence in President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
[…]
The findings on Russians’ attitudes are likely to be disappointing for NATO supporters.

Western officials have calculated that economic sanctions will eventually erode Russian support for Mr. Putin’s decision to intervene in eastern Ukraine, but he has remained extremely popular by riding a wave of nationalism and controlling much of the news media. Most Russians are unhappy with the state of the economy, but they tend to blame not Mr. Putin but the drop in oil prices and the West’s efforts to punish Russia.

Eighty-eight percent of Russians said they had confidence in Mr. Putin to do the right thing on international affairs, the highest rating since Pew started taking polls on the question in 2003.

@klaus : encore un coup des #Ossis ;-)

Putin, Contrary to Earlier Assertions, Suggests Planning to Seize Crimea Started in Early 2014 - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/world/europe/putin-contrary-to-earlier-assertions-suggests-planning-to-seize-crimea-star

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has publicly indicated for the first time that military planning to seize Crimea started well before the referendum there on the issue, which he had cited previously as the main reason for Russia’s annexation.

Mr. Putin said he made the decision around 7 a.m. on Feb. 23, 2014, after an all-night emergency meeting with his security chiefs on the crisis in Ukraine. Viktor F. Yanukovych had just been deposed as president of Ukraine, and the meeting was called to discuss his rescue, Mr. Putin said.

Russia has long contended that it acted spontaneously to reclaim Crimea, mainly to protect Russian speakers who it said had been threatened, and to stave off what it suspected was an attempt by NATO to colonize the Black Sea.

Une bonne partie de la presse reprend cette « révélation ».
Mais qu’apprend-on, au fond ? Que V. V. Poutine n’a pas attendu très longtemps après le putsch renversant Ianoukovytch, et ce malgré l’accord politique obtenu le jour même pour un gouvernement de transition, pour identifier les tireurs de ficelles et en tirer les conséquences stratégiques…

Le reste, que c’est un remarquable tacticien capable d’exploiter au mieux les faiblesse de ses adversaires, on le savait déjà.

Crise ukrainienne : Poutine suspend un projet de gazoduc vers le sud de l’Europe
▻http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2014/12/02/poutine-suspend-le-projet-de-gazoduc-south-stream-conteste-par-l-europe_4532

Il s’agit de l’une des premières conséquences des sanctions européennes à l’égard de la Russie dans le contexte de la crise en Ukraine. Le président russe, Vladimir Poutine, a annoncé, lundi 1er décembre, la suspension du projet russo-italien de gazoduc South Stream.

Porté par le géant gazier russe Gazprom, le projet, d’un coût évalué à 16 milliards d’euros, est destiné à approvisionner l’Europe en gaz russe en contournant l’Ukraine. Long de 3 600 kilomètres et d’une capacité estimée à 63 milliards de mètres cubes par an, il devait relier la Russie à l’Europe du Sud en passant par la Bulgarie pour contourner le territoire ukrainien. Le chantier avait été lancé en décembre 2012.

Mais en juin la Russie avait accusé l’Union européenne (UE) de faire pression sur certains de ses Etats membres, notamment la Bulgarie, pour qu’ils suspendent leur participation au projet. « Comme nous n’avons toujours pas reçu la permission de la Bulgarie, nous pensons que dans la situation actuelle la Russie ne peut pas poursuivre la réalisation de ce projet », a déclaré M. Poutine à l’occasion d’une visite en Turquie.

Conséquence des sanctions ? ou poursuite d’une politique de longue date de l’UE (cf. p. ex. ►http://seenthis.net/messages/265547 les « pressions » datent, au moins de décembre 2013, les premières sanctions de l’annexion de la Crimée en mars 2014)

Je complète donc les implicites du passage ci-dessus…

La Russie [paranoïaque, comme toujours] avait [à tort] accusé l’UE de faire pression sur certains États membres…

China and Russia Fail to Reach Deal on Gas Plan - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/world/asia/china-russia.html

President Xi Jinping of China and the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, were unable to announce an agreement on a natural gas deal on Tuesday, despite high expectations that mutual political interests would help finally push through the project.
(…)
A joint statement said that Russian natural gas supplies would start flowing “as soon as possible,” a phrase used after many previous negotiations between Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation, and an indication that the two sides could not close the gap on price in time for the two leaders to announce a deal at their meeting.

Energy analysts had predicted that there would finally be an agreement, partly because Russia might have been willing to accept China’s hard bargaining in order to diversify Gazprom’s natural gas sales into Asia and away from a stagnant market in Europe.

L’absence d’accord surprend les analystes occidentaux, mais apparemment, les affaires sont les affaires…

“Given the political and commercial catalysts, this is a surprising result for everyone and for Gazprom,” said James Henderson, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain. “There was an expectation that with Putin arriving in China and with the political issues with Europe — that would be the trigger to get it over the line.”

What Is Putin’s ‘New Russia’? - NYTimes.com

▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/world/europe/what-is-putins-new-russia.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, appearing cool and confident on national television during a four-hour question-and-answer show on Thursday, referred repeatedly to southeastern Ukraine as “New Russia,” a historical term for the area north of the Black Sea that the Russian empire conquered in the 1700s. “God knows” why the region became part of Ukraine in the 1920s, he said in response to a questioner, a strong signal that he would gladly correct that error.

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/g8533x4fe4w7636/new_russia.png

#ukraine #russie #nouvelle_russie

In East Ukraine, Protesters Seek Russian Troops - NYTimes.com

▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/world/europe/russia-crimea-ukraine-unrest.html?emc=edit_th_20140408&nl=todaysheadlines&n

MOSCOW — Under the attentive eye of Russian state television, several hundred pro-Russian demonstrators in the city of Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, declared on Monday that they were forming an independent republic and urged President Vladimir V. Putin to send troops to the region as a peacekeeping force, even though there was no imminent threat to peace.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/08/world/08UKRAINE2/08UKRAINE2-articleLarge.jpg

#ukraine #russie

If Not a Cold War, a Return to a Chilly Rivalry - NYTimes.com

▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/if-not-a-new-cold-war-a-distinct-chill-in-the-air.html?emc=edit_th_20140319

WASHINGTON — A month ago, most Americans could not have found Crimea on a map. But its lightning-quick takeover by Moscow has abruptly redrawn the geopolitical atlas and may have decisively ended a 25-year period of often tumultuous yet also constructive relations between the United States and Russia.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/03/19/world/JP-PREXY/JP-PREXY-master675.jpg

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Washington and Moscow had struggled to replace their Cold War rivalry with a new form of partnership, one that was tested by crisis after crisis but that endured in its own peculiar way. After each rupture, whether over Kosovo or Iraq or Georgia, came another reset that put the two powers back onto an uneasy equilibrium.

Putin Reclaims Crimea for Russia and Bitterly Denounces the West - NYTimes.com

▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/ukraine.html?emc=edit_th_20140319&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=67617143&_r=0

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin reclaimed Crimea as a part of Russia on Tuesday, reversing what he described as a historic injustice inflicted by the Soviet Union 60 years ago and brushing aside international condemnation that could leave Russia isolated for years to come.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/03/19/world/europe/c19ukraine-span/19crimea-1-superJumbo.jpg

In an emotional address steeped in years of resentment and bitterness at perceived slights from the West, Mr. Putin made it clear that Russia’s patience for post-Cold War accommodation, much diminished of late, had finally been exhausted. Speaking to the country’s political elite in the Grand Kremlin Palace, he said he did not seek to divide Ukraine any further, but he vowed to protect Russia’s interests there from what he described as Western actions that had left Russia feeling cornered.

#crimée #russie #ukraine

Growing Crisis in Its Backyard Snares Russia - NYTimes.com

▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/world/europe/putins-silence-on-ukraine-adds-to-confusion.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edi

MOSCOW — Despite repeated vows not to interfere or intervene, President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia has now found itself more deeply ensnared than ever in Ukraine’s worsening political crisis, facing appeals to support the country’s ethnic Russians, provide haven for its deposed president and perhaps even undertake a military response. The question is whether he intended it that way.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/02/28/world/putin/putin-articleLarge.jpg

Mr. Putin himself has made no public remarks on the turmoil in Ukraine since President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s flight from Kiev last week. That coincided with the end of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, which officials here have celebrated as proof of the emergence of a new, powerful and proud Russia nearly a quarter century after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

#russie #ukraine

Pas de dîner pour Poutine…

Sign of a Chill : E.U. Doesn’t Set Table for Putin - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/world/europe/putin-russia-european-union.html

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has for years trumpeted grand ambitions for Moscow’s relations with the European Union, pushing to break down visa barriers and urging the creation of what he calls a “harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”

On a visit to the Brussels headquarters of the 28-nation bloc on Tuesday, however, Mr. Putin did not even get dinner. That customary courtesy was pulled from a sharply curtailed program — a small sign of the way escalating tensions over Ukraine have scrambled even basic rituals of diplomacy, chilled relations between Moscow and Brussels, and taken some of the shine off Mr. Putin’s image as a leader who can turn any crisis, even the mayhem in Syria, to his advantage.

Sinon, sur ce coup…

Mr. Putin added his own characteristic twist on Tuesday, needling European Union officials for visiting an encampment of protesters in the center of Kiev. “Just imagine how our European partners would react during the crisis in, say, Greece or Cyprus if our foreign minister joined anti-European rallies there,” he said.

C’est bien dans son style, mais c’est finalement plutôt gentil pour décrire une ingérence caractérisée…