So a woman walks into a room… That’s how quite a few jokes usually start. In our case, self-appointed Queen of Nulandistan Victoria “F**k the EU” walks into a room in Moscow to talk to Russian deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Grigory Karasin.
A joke? Oh no; that really happened. Why?
Let’s start with the official reactions. Karasin qualified the talks as “fruitful,” while stressing Moscow does not approve of Washington becoming part of the Normandy-style (Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France) negotiations on Ukraine. Not after the relentless demonization not only of the Kremlin but also of Russia as a whole since the Maidan coup.
Ryabkov, for his part, made it known the current state of the US-Russia relationship remains, well, corrosive.
It’s crucial to remember the Queen of Nulandistan went to Moscow only after meeting with certified Washington vassal President Poroshenko and her own, hand-picked Prime Minister, “Yats”; and that was before accompanying Secretary of State John Kerry on the full regalia State Department trip to Sochi on May 12.
The Minsk-2 agreement — the actual product of the Normandy-style negotiations — directly involved Berlin and Paris, who finally saw the realpolitik on the wall and were compelled to divert from Washington’s monomaniac antagonistic approach.