Check out Dmitriy Medvedev’s response to a question on whether the timing of his state of the nation speech so close to the U.S. election was “coincidental”:

MEDVEDEV: Do you think this is blackmail? This is not just a coincidence, I can disclose to you the inside workings of this. Two times I postponed my state-of-the-nation address because I was not happy with the documents that had been prepared for me, and at some time I simply had to sit down at the table and edit the text of that state-of-the-nation address. And the date I chose was November 5. With all my respect to the United States, I absolutely forgot about the important political event that had to take place that day. There is nothing personal here.

Ok. Maybe he didn’t quite forget. But this just goes to say that not all events in the world necessarily revolve around U.S. elections. Thus, they shouldn’t be interpreted as such.

Full transcript of Medvedev’s CFR talk is here.

Update: In a story that starts with Medvedev’s comment about lack of trust in U.S.-Russian relations (from aforementioned CFR talk), WaPo ran a pic of Medvedev pouting. Sheesh.