After the United States announced that it would go ahead and place a nuclear missile protection system in the former Soviet-satellites of Poland and Ukraine, the Russian President (not synonyms with leader) announced the day after Obama’s historic election victory that Russian would in turn place missiles close to and in the direction of Europe for the first time since the Cold War.

Well, it turns out that the Russians had different plans after all.

At the G20 (20 wealthiest nations in the world, of course) conference being held in Washington, D.C., on what to do with regards to the economic crisis, the Russian president announced that Russia would in fact retract the threat to Europe and not place missiles in the direction, at least, of Europe.

The Russian back-off was most likely engineered by French mediation headed, of course, by the French President Nicholas Sarkozy.

Yesterday, on the opening day of the conference, the Russian president stated that all countries “should refrain from unilateral steps” when dealing with European security and that matters should be decided at the 2009 summer conference on the continents security. This was an obvious quip toward the U.S.

All Medvedev is walking away from a Russian missile threat, he is making it clear that Russia is still annoyed by the U.S.’ actions close to the Russian frontier.