If you've been following the Russian media war coverage, as I have, you were also surprised by how much the Russian press downplayed yesterday's incident of Russian ambassador Titorenko's convoy getting caught in US-Iraqi crossfire. There were some serious injuries, but, fortunately, nobody was killed. The incident hasn't been burried in Russian papers, but it hasn't been a banner headline piece either.
Of course Alexander Manikov, a Russian war correspondent who has given some really pathetic and even irresponsible reports of late, was in the convoy and tried to portray the incident in the worst possible light. Keeping with his habit of using selective observations to make damning implications about the US, he said in this report of the incident that he doesn't blame the Iraqis who naturally fired at them because the Americans seemed to have started the conflict, and that the bullet holes in the embassy's vehicles looked like American M16 bullet holes. He also complains that a US military convoy didn't stop to help. Interestingly, the injured Russians sought out and received medical attention, but the report doesn't mention whether they got attention from US doctors or from the Iraqi doctors. (If you were injured, would you go to the Republican Guard doctors or to the US Army doctors for help?)
When I first read the New York Times article, I thought that this was going to produce the same fallout as the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Serbia. However, I think Russia's desire to be a part of the rebuilding of Iraq will make this incident a quickly forgotten asterisk of history.
Posted by Xander at April 7, 2003 08:18 AM | TrackBack