WASHINGTON – Listen to the voice barking orders on a Russian ship last Sunday as it drove straight toward a Ukrainian tug: “Crush him from the right. Do it! Do it! [Expletive] cut him off!” And then, just before the deliberate collision, a satisfied: “Hold on, everyone.”
What you sense is the raw exuberance of Russian power, in the audio and video recordings released by the Ukrainian Interior Minister and posted on YouTube by BBC News. The Russian captain snarls obscene, bellicose orders to his crew – clearly confident that he’s carrying out an operation approved by his superiors.
What happened Sunday in the international waters of the Black Sea was just one more chapter in President Vladimir Putin’s recurring, calculated show of strength.
Trump laudably scuttled a planned Buenos Aires session with Putin.
Trump may have concluded that this wasn’t the weekend to be palling around with Putin, with special counsel Robert Mueller focusing on the question of the Trump family’s possible financial involvement in Russia in 2016. But whatever the reason, it was the right call.