My goodness. Such language:
America’s new top diplomat for Europe seems to have been caught being decidedly undiplomatic about her EU allies in a phone call apparently intercepted and leaked by Russia.
“Fuck the EU,” Victoria Nuland apparently says in a recent phone call with the US ambassador to Kiev, Geoff Pyatt, as they discuss the next moves to try to resolve the crisis in Ukraine amid weeks of pro-democracy protests which have rocked the country.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Nuland “has been in contact with her EU counterparts and of course has apologized for these reported comments”. She said that if the Russians were responsible for listening to, recording and posting a private diplomatic telephone conversation, it would be “a new low in Russian tradecraft.”
It’s possible that “Fuck the EU” might have been an appropriate sentiment under the circumstances. Who knows? I’ll try not to be judgmental here. Still, given the vast surveillance apparatus in daily use by the United States, it’s a little rich to call the Russian action “a new low” in espionage tradecraft. Unless, of course, Psaki meant that the Russians should have listened and recorded—that part was OK—but then released it a bit more discreetly. Certainly the United States would never leak something like this to YouTube. That just isn’t done. We’d leak it to someone reliable at the New York Times, for God’s sake. Show some class, people.
And while we’re on the subject of class, Vladimir, will you please let our Olympians’ yogurt shipment through? This is all getting just a little petty, isn’t it?
