Isidingo - The Need

So the whole world waited for Russia to announce its retaliation against the expulsion of its diplomats regarding the Litvinenko case, and ... nothing. What was that? It was a show of having steel in your blood.
But the twist of lemon in the vodka is that someone tried to kill the thief Boris Berezovsky, who naturally blames everything on Vlad Putin. As if Putin, the FSB or anyone related to the Russian govenment would be so stupid as to try to assassinate this man while the whole world watches. Apparently the clumsy would-be killer thought shooting him in a hotel room would be the best option. How convenient for him to have been seen "buying weapons" and to have been caught. How "awful" that he would have a CHILD with him. No doubt a full video confession will soon follow, and if uncle Boris has anything to do with it, there will be a Hollywood movie too.
The fact that the maffia has for years been trying to kill uncle Boris does not seem to have entered into anyone's head. Once again this man is doing all he can to make mischief for Russia and more particularly for Mr Putin.
It would be easy for Putin to kick out some UK diplomats and then the UK would have to respond and Russia would have to respond again and the next thing you know everyone is staring down the barrel of a gun because some stupid prison guard snorted radioactive material.
In this case Russia is being the bigger man.
Alexander Grushko is exactly right when he says Russia is being punished for upholding its constitution. There are 21 Russians living in the UK, some of who have been given citizenship, who are wanted in Russia on different charges, which include murder and terrorism. Indeed, two are directly involved in this case, Boris Berezovsky wanted for embezzeling millions, and the spokesman for Chechen muslim terrorists Akhmed Zakayev. And yet Russia does not go around threatening and trying to bring the world to crisis over this.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown might think he has scored some points but he has been shown up for being hot headed and unstable. Europe will be making up its own mind. And given the push by the US to put the star wars shield on european territory this could be just what europe needs to decide where to place its trust.
It would seem not likely that Germany, Italy and France will throw their money in with the UK's singular bid to make more out of this case than there is. They are dependant on Russian energy and big deals have been signed with Gazprom and Total.
There are too many big financial deals on the table with Russia for this to be made so serious by Brown. Even for his own country, relations with Russia have been good for a long time.
They hysteria whipped up in the UK by uncle Boris and his PR minions has made it impossible for Lugovoi to have a fair trial. It will be another Lockerbie trial. You can see where this is going when the Guardian newspaper says all the expelled diplomats are "spies" who are also FSB agents. To this we can only say "Doh!". This is like the Kremlin acting surprised to find out that British diplomats also work for MI6.