Putin finally got to deliver the speech at the UN General Assembly that he’d been so desperate to give. Huge expectations had been built in Russia over this speech. People were told that Putin was about to reveal something so massively important that the world needed to sit up and listen.
Putin came to the General Assembly, opened his mouth and. . . said nothing. Nothing even remotely different from the same tired old stuff he’s been saying for years.
“Americans didn’t manage to be good Americans. Please elect us to be Americans, and we’ll promise to be much better Americans than these current Americans.”
Everybody has heard it a million times already but poor deluded Putin seems convinced that the problem is that people don’t understand what a great deal he’s offering.
This is why people in Ukraine and Syria need to keep dying: their deaths give Putin an opportunity to reiterate, yet again, the same boring message of “We can be much better Americans than the current, etc, etc.”
Clarissa's Blog 
Speeches by world leaders at the U.N. (like Obama’s and Putin’s today) aren’t really important, unless the speeches are aimed at getting action from the Security Council. Otherwise, they’re just words to applaud or hiss at, before they dissipate into the air.
What MAY matter today is the direct talk between Obama and Putin, if that comes to any conclusion on how Russia and the U.S. will be interacting re: Syria and ISIS. Obama had said that he also wants to discuss the Ukraine situation, and Putin has said that Ukraine will be discussed only “if there’s time.”
I don’t think Obama is clever enough to get Putin to do anything that Putin doesn’t want to, so I’m not hopeful about their conversation. But it will be more consequential than either of their speeches.
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Putin is always very honest and direct in his speeches. This is his idee fixe, his uber-idea: the US failed as the world’s superpower, now is Russia’s turn to play that role. The fellow seriously believes it and so do the 140,000 Russians he represents.
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Do you mean 140 million?
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Yes, of course. This must be a Freudian slip where I hope his support drops dramatically.
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