Rumors of secret deals fly before #Poroshenko and #Putin's Milan meeting today. http://t.co/HJ9P8VX9U3 pic.twitter.com/pHvkVTlLn2
— Katya Gorchinskaya (@kgorchinskaya) October 16, 2014
Here's a precis from our news desk of remarks from Putin ahead of his trip to Serbia today. Pretty feisty stuff, it seems:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised Moscow's "Serbian friends" and lashed out at the West in remarks published ahead of a state visit to Belgrade on October 16.
Criticizing sanctions that the United States and European Union have imposed on Moscow over its actions in Ukraine, Putin told the Serbian daily "Politika" that isolating Russia was an "absurd, illusory goal" and that attempts to do so could severely damage Europe's economy.
In a pointed reminder of Russia's nuclear might, Putin said: "We hope our partners will realize the futility of attempts to blackmail Russia and remember what consequences discord between major nuclear powers could bring for strategic stability."
Putin is to attend a military parade as Belgrade marks the anniversary of its liberation from the Nazis in 1944, a celebration Serbia moved forward four days to accommodate Putin's schedule.
"Seventy years ago, our peoples together crushed the criminal ideology of misanthropy that threatened civilization," Putin said.
In a veiled swipe at the United States, he said "it is important today that people in various countries, on various continents remember what terrible consequences certainty in one's own exceptionalism can bring."