Share |

Monday, October 06, 2008

Putin Jokingly Refers to Yushchenko as ‘Mazurik’

When President Yushchenko’s Lviv-bound jet experienced problems shortly after takeoff Thursday, the pilots decided to fly back to Kyiv for an emergency landing.

Meanwhile, Tymoshenko was about to fly off to Moscow for gas talks with Putin, her jet waiting on the runway.

Having landed, Yushchenko’s posse requisitioned Tymoshenko’s jet, forcing her to take a charter flight to Moscow. The story grabbed headlines and Putin picked it up in what was a rarely missed opportunity to get back at Yushchenko.

Referring to Yushchenko as mazurik (Rus. for pickpocket, corpse) became the opening joke in an otherwise emotionally charged press conference that featured Putin crying on Tymoshenko’s shoulder, bewailing Ukraine’s arms supplies to Georgia. Here’s the mazurik quote:



Putin: Some mazurk snatched the jet. Okay then…uh


Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/98390.html
Original source: http://5.ua

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Divide et impera" - although the Ukrainian politicians seem to do the first part on their own anyway.

Taras said...

Let’s call it “Coalition of the Willing to Please Putin.”

Anonymous said...

This is from an excellent article in Zerkalo Nedili:

Almost two hundred years ago Alexander Pushkin said: “I deeply despise my fatherland but it vexes me when a foreigner shares this feeling of mine”.


http://www.mw.ua/1000/1550/64295/

Taras said...

Lol:)!

In cross-cultural communication, this reaction comes naturally. I’d put it this way: “When I curse my country, it’s criticism, but when you curse my country, it’s war.”

Anonymous said...

Well, Taras, there's also some other aspects to this.

Putin calling the President of Ukraine is like a mafia don complaining that there's an embezzler in another mafia family.

Another aspect to this is that Tymoshenko, as Prime Minister of Ukraine, should not have accepted such a comment from a KGB thug like Putin about the President of Ukraine.