There are suspicions that the shade of Franz Kafka, amused and alarmed by our conflicted realm, is scripting the life of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Today he oversaw the test-firing of a Bulava intercontinental missile. Tomorrow, reports euronews, he meets in Moscow with U.S. officials to revisit the 1987 INF nuclear treaty. This should prove a lively discussion, as each country accuses the other of breaching the treaty’s terms. “The crisis in Ukraine, which was, in fact, engineered and developed by some of our Western partners,” Putin said, “is now being used for the resuscitation of the NATO military bloc. But all this of course should be and will be taken into account in our decision-making about the safety of our country.”
Putin has commandeered his country’s defense industries, and has ambitions of updating Russia’s nuclear arsenal and pursuing new weapons design. Somehow, that sounds not so good.
