“Let me tell you. We always start by saying that there is a principle on which we cannot, under any circumstances, compromise, and that is that dogs have six legs. And we press on insisting on this point. You then reply: ‘We can only offer you evidence that dogs have four legs.’ We reply: ‘Absolutely not. Your evidence is worthless, and I have received clear instructions from my Foreign Ministry not to give ground on this point.’ So we carry on like this until we wear out the opponent. At this point, displaying great generosity, we declare: ‘Just in order to reach an agreement – just to satisfy you – let us say that dogs have five legs.’”

I am quoting verbatim what Soviet Ambassador Lev Mendelevich told Italian Ambassador Mario Michele Alessi in explanation of the Soviet negotiating tactics during the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). This is recorded in the book, CSCE Testimonies – Causes and Consequences of the Helsinki Final Act, 1972-1989, just published by the OSCE in its CSCE Oral History Project 2013.

I was involved in heated negotiations with Mendelevich, a senior officer in the KGB, in the CSCE in 1972-3. I have also had the honour to be invited to lunch with him, just the two of us, in the Soviet embassy in Helsinki, to discuss the CSCE and Malta-Soviet bilateral relations, with hidden microphones recording what we were saying. Though rivals at the negotiating table, we respected each other as representatives of our respective countries.

Mendelevich has since passed away, but I see that the negotiating tactics he describes have been resuscitated by Vladimir Putin, also a former senior KGB officer, and currently President of the Russian Federation. He wants the rest of the world to believe his version of his involvement in the dangerous situation created in Crimea. Only those who maintain that dogs have six legs are ready to believe him.