Medvedev To Obama: Maybe Sort Of Whatever

Apparently Russian President Dmitri Medvedev doesn’t want to wait until his foreign minister meets Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday to discuss President Obama’s sort-of-quid-pro-quo trading eastern-European missile defense for an end to Russian cooperation on Iranian missile development. According to The New York Times, Medvedev gave a substanceless-but-warm answer at a press conference:

“No one links these issues to any exchange, especially on the Iran issue,” Interfax reported that Mr. Medvedev said at a news conference in Madrid, where he was visiting to boost economic and political ties.

“What we are getting from our U.S. partners shows at least one thing: Our U.S. partners are ready to discuss the issue,” he said. “It’s good, because several months ago we were getting different signals — that the decision has been made, there is nothing to speak about, that we have done everything as we have decided.”

I don’t know what this means either, aside from “That last president was a schmuck.”