(PUTIN)
In conclusion, I would like to say that I highly appreciate the outcome of this summit. Later this year, we are going to meet a few more times within the framework of various international fora. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the President of the United States who has accepted the invitation to participate in the festivities on the occasion of the anniversary of the great victory on May 9th in Moscow. This is a natural manifestation of respect of historic memory and the memory of the alliance that bonded our two countries in the years of the second world war.
This seems like a fine idea--especially if Putin releases Khodorkovsky beforehand. A good time to renew the US-Russian alliance that beat the Nazis and can beat Islamic extremism in the same way. There's a huge statue of a victorious Soviet soldier looming over Vienna, and for all its awful grandiosity, I kind of liked seeing it.
Of course the plaza was probably the only unswept snow in Vienna, they don't much like the Russians here.
One reason Europeans were nice to America in the past, it seems to me, is that they wanted us to protect Europe from the Russians. Now that they're not so afraid of a weak Russia, Europeans think that they don't need us, and they're not so nice to America.
On the other hand, the Russians really do need us, and I sort of think we need them to beat the new Nazi threat, so this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, as Humphrey Bogart said to Claude Rains in Casablanca...
