Putin Sides with China

Almost all the news outlets carried the comments of Vladimir Putin about North Korea.  He sounded like he had been contemplating this kind of thing for a long time and was getting into the discussion to help the parties settle their potential problems with each other.  He said, 

"The region's problems should only be settled through a direct dialogue of all the parties concerned without any preconditions. Provocations, pressure and militarist and insulting rhetoric are a dead-end road," he added.

North Korea has conducted a flurry of missile tests in recent weeks amid escalating international unease, prompting Putin to weigh in on Friday and warn that the ongoing geopolitical dispute is "balancing on the brink of a large-scale conflict."

Now, just in case anyone was wondering where this came from, it is almost exactly the same language the Chinese foreign policy is based upon.  The Chinese have been calling for the United States to meet with the North Koreans without any preconditions, for months now.  It was a lecture when it first started.  Then it became a drumbeat of persuasive remarks saying the two sides should get together.  This essentially lets China off the hook for creating the situation to begin with.  Now that it has gone too far, they have tried getting some help in the form of their biggest ally, Russia, which uses almost the same words to describe a solution.  

The United States is not buying this product, and while the Russians are busy with stirring up trouble in the national elections and feeding press stories to create more political instability to keep that going, the Russians are just playing China's game without a semblance of independent thought.  There are 36 agreements between the two countries, signed in the last few years,  for cooperation in different areas.  I would have thought that would have meant Russia would be a partner, not a puppet.  Perhaps not.