The Kremlin is doing damage control after Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly said, “If I want, I will take Kiev in two weeks,” comments made to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.  Russia says this was a private diplomatic conversation from which one sentence was taken out of context.

“Whether these words were said or not, in my viewpoint, the quote given is taken out of context, and it had an absolutely different meaning,” said Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov.  “It appears to me to be simply unworthy of a serious political figure,” he continued.

The remark was published in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Monday.  Barroso relayed Putin’s response to his question of whether Russian troops had crossed into eastern Ukraine.  Putin – a Judo black belt, ex-KGB agent, and oft-shirtless outdoorsman – is know for peppering his statements with macho bluster.

Russia is also reacting to NATO’s announced plans to create a rapid response force to counter potential Russian aggression in the alliance’s eastern and Baltic countries.

“We believe that the defining factor in our relationship with NATO remains the unacceptability for Russia of plans to move military infrastructures of the alliance to our borders, including by means of expanding the bloc,” said Mikhail Popov, the deputy secretary for Russia’s Security Council, who described the expansion of NATO “one of the leading military dangers for the Russian Federation”.