Medvedev Confronts U.S. on Missiles Just Hours After Election

Via Bloomberg -

Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev said he would deploy new missiles in Europe, confronting the U.S. hours after Barack Obama won the American presidential election.

Medvedev said he would place a short-range Iskander missile system in Russia's exclave of Kaliningrad, wedged between Poland and Lithuania, to "neutralize" a planned U.S. missile-defense system "if necessary," Medvedev said. A radio-jamming installation in Kaliningrad will also be aimed at elements of the U.S. system in Poland and the Czech Republic, he said.

In the annual state-of-the-nation address today in the Kremlin, Medvedev avoided mentioning Obama while highlighting areas of tension between the two countries. Russian-U.S. ties are at their frostiest since the end of the Cold War, frayed by the planned missile shield, the war in Georgia and the U.S. push to admit Georgia and Ukraine to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

"This is a warning to Obama -- a bright, clear warning -- that tough negotiations are ahead," Alexander Rahr, a Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, said by telephone. Medvedev's "fist-waving" on the missile shield may be premature, since Obama has shown less support for the system than President George W. Bush, Rahr said.

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Medvedev said before the election that he was prepared to work with any new leader in Washington, though he expressed a veiled preference for Obama: "It would be easier to work with people with a modern outlook, rather than those whose eyes are turned back to the past,'' he said. He congratulated Obama on his election victory by telegram, the Kremlin said.