Putin Takes the High Road

Russian President Vladimir Putin held his rival Barack Obama up to ridicule on Friday by declining to engage in tit-for-tat expulsions – and instead inviting U.S. diplomats’ children to the Kremlin to party.

The Russian strongman’s actions were accompanied by a fusillade of abuse aimed at Obama from Moscow underlings, who called him a ‘political corpse’ and said his administration was made up of  ‘angry and shallow-brained losers’.

Putin had been expected to mirror Obama’s decision to expel 35 intelligence agents with Cold War-style revenge expulsions.

His foreign minister had called for the measure, but instead Putin – who met the makers of a Russian TV drama about Vikings and posed with a large sword – said he was waiting to deal with Donald Trump.

‘We will not create problems for American diplomats. We will not expel anyone,’ Putin said in a statement, also inviting children of US diplomats to a holiday party at the Kremlin.

‘We evaluate the new unfriendly steps by the outgoing US administration as a provocation aimed at further undermining Russian-American relations.’

He said Moscow would plan its next steps ‘based on the policies pursued by the administration of president Donald Trump’, while warning that the Kremlin reserves the right to hit back.

Meanwhile the Kremlin foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s official spokesman slammed the Obama administration, calling them a ‘group of foreign policy losers, angry and shallow-brained’.

Lavrov had fired back at Barack Obama’s decision, suggesting expelling officials and closing down an area used by Americans for their summer retreat on the outskirts of Moscow and a warehouse south of Moscow.

But Putin dismissed the idea, saying he did not want to stop youngsters from being able to use the area.

The apparent decision to over-rule Lavrov is likely to have been orchestrated from the start to emphasize the options open to Moscow, rather than being done as a slap-down from Putin.

And the  Konstantin Kosachev, head of the upper house of the Russian Duma’s committee on foreign affairs, was reported by The Observer to have called Obama a ‘political corpse’.

‘The leaving administration has no reason and no political or moral right for such drastic and disruptive steps with regards to bilateral relations with Russia,’ he said.

‘Forgive me for being harsh, but I just cannot find other words: this is the agony of not the lame ducks, but of political corpses.’

It was part of an attack which saw the foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claim the US and American people were ‘humiliated by their own President’ in what she described as the Cold War-style measures against Moscow.

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