MOSCOW: Normally the formality of European diplomacy would be shattered if, say, an ambassador suggested that his country might kick its opponents’ posterior. But when the remark comes from Dmitri Rogozin, Russia’s bombastic ambassador to Nato, it tends to elicit at most a cringe. Even so, when Rogozin took to his Twitter account this week and wrote that typically tart message in response to US’s planned deployment of missile interceptors in Romania, it did not help ease tensions. “The Americans and their allies again want to surround the den of the Russian bear?” he wrote in Russian. “How many times must they be reminded that this is dangerous?” “The bear will emerge,” he wrote, and kick them in the you-know-what. (Rogozin softened his own translation into English on Twitter, using the slightly more diplomatic “beat up”.) Via his regularly updated Twitter feed, Rogozin has called Ukraine’s pro-Western, lame-duck president, Viktor Yushchenko, a “loser”, called Western politicians “irrational” and often highlighted US and Nato failures in Afghanistan. “There have been a number of occasions where you see ambassador Rogozin sitting in some seminar and sort of tweeting more or less live,” said a Nato official. “Security issues are not a laughing matter.” Source: On Twitter, Russian kicks Americans? butt - Europe - World - The Times of India
