Der Spiegel has a fairly astonishing interview with Gerhard Schröder, a man who likes Russia:
SPIEGEL: Do you believe that the American military advisors stationed in Tbilisi encouraged Georgia to launch its attack?
Schröder: I wouldn’t go that far. But everyone knows that these US military advisors in Georgia exist — a deployment that I’ve never considered particularly intelligent. And it would have been strange if these experts had not had any information. Either they were extremely unprofessional or they were truly fooled, which is hard to imagine.
SPIEGEL: The US government claims that it warned Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili against taking military action. But wasn’t the whole thing only too convenient for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin?
Schröder: These are speculations in which I prefer not to participate. I assume that no one in the Moscow leadership has an interest in military conflicts. There are enough internal problems in Russia that need to be solved. For instance, corruption and abuse of authority must be addressed. Russia has plenty of deficits, an issue I’ve addressed many a time. President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin are addressing these problems — together, by the way, in friendship and mutual respect, not in competition with one another, as journalistic fortune-tellers imply.
It’s like Brezhnev on codine. Still, Gerhard does manage one pithy moment:
SPIEGEL: The Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, followed up by saying: “Today we’re all Georgians.”
Schröder: I am not.
I’d sort of guessed.
