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.”