U.S. needed Georgia war, Putin says
Was White House trying to benefit a candidate?
Putin's comments in a television interview, his most extensive to date on Russia's decision to send troops into Georgia earlier this month, sought to present the military operation as a response to brazen, Cold War-style provocations by the United States. In tones that seemed alternately angry and mischievous, Putin suggested that the Bush administration may have tried to create a crisis that would influence American voters in the choice of a successor to President Bush.
"The suspicion would arise that someone in the United States created this conflict on purpose to stir up the situation and to create an advantage for one of the candidates in the competitive race for the presidency in the United States," Putin said in an interview with CNN.
He added, "They needed a small victorious war."
Putin did not specify which candidate he had in mind, but there was no doubt that he was referring to Sen. John McCain, the Republican. McCain is loathed in the Kremlin because he has a close relationship with Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and has called for imposing stiff penalties on Russia, including ejecting it from the Group of 8 industrialized nations.
Only last spring, Putin, then Russia's president, held a summit meeting with Bush in which the two expressed personal affection for each other and sought to smooth over tensions in the bilateral relationship.
Russia has been struggling to persuade the outside world to back its action in Georgia. On Thursday, China and four other countries meeting with Russia for the annual summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security alliance, declined to back Russia's military action in a joint communique.
Putin's interview came after his protege, President Dmitri A. Medvedev, had spoken to several foreign news media outlets this week as part of a concerted move by the Kremlin to counter Georgia's public relations offensive in the international media. Medvedev's tone was less harsh, though he also criticized the West.
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