This is their favorite excuse, because it’s transparently stupid and nonsensical. That’s what makes it fun. It’s a dare: Что вы собираетесь с этим делать?
Russia signaled concern on Wednesday at Estonia’s treatment of its large ethnic Russian minority, comparing language policy in the Baltic state with what it said was a call in Ukraine to prevent the use of Russian.
Russia has defended its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula by arguing it has the right to protect Russian-speakers outside its borders, so the reference to linguistic tensions in another former Soviet republic comes at a highly sensitive moment.
Russia fully supported the protection of the rights of linguistic minorities, a Moscow diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, according to a summary of the session issued by the U.N.’s information department.
Imagine if, say, Mexico invaded the U.S. because so many people here speak Spanish. Or France took over Quebec. Or Holland laid claim on the Pennsylvania Dutch.
It’d be ridiculous, right? If they ever got close to us, we’d kick their asses back to where they came from. And they know it. That’s why it hasn’t happened. No ludicrous pretext necessary.
Putin is just doing whatever he wants and taunting us. Daring us to stop him. Which he knows we won’t because, as Jim Geraghty notes, we’ve got better things to do:
Dear Citizens of 2114:
We’re sorry.
Signed,
The rest of America, 2014