US blames Russia for leak of undiplomatic language from top official
America's new top diplomat for Europe seems to have been caught being decidedly undiplomatic about her EU allies in a phone call apparently intercepted and leaked by Russia.
"Fuck the EU," Victoria Nuland apparently says in a recent phone call with the US ambassador to Kiev, Geoff Pyatt, as they discuss the next moves to try to resolve the crisis in Ukraine amid weeks of pro-democracy protests which have rocked the country. The call appears to have been intercepted and released on YouTube, accompanied by Russian captions of the private and candid conversation.
Although the US state department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, White House spokesman Jay Carney alleged that because it had been "tweeted out by the Russian government, it says something about Russia's role".
In addition to Vlad The Impaler, I can think of a couple of other people who are doubtless getting great enjoyment form this story, Angela Merkel and Chelsea Manning.
The US State Department does not get high marks for learning from experience. After the great Wikileaks fiasco, you would think that they would have put their diplomats through remedial security 101.