"Breaks definitely. Through or down, I don't know"

Things aren't going too well for Condi Rice and Robert Gates over in Russia today:

MOSCOW - In a tense start to talks on a range of thorny issues, President Vladimir Putin on Friday warned U.S. officials to back off a plan to install missile defenses in eastern Europe or risk harming relations with Moscow.

Addressing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Russian president appeared to mock the U.S. missile defense plan, which is at the center of a tangle of arms control and diplomatic disputes between the former Cold War adversaries.

"Of course we can sometime in the future decide that some anti-missile defense system should be established somewhere on the moon," Putin said, according to an English translation. "But before we reach such arrangements we will lose the opportunity for fixing some particular arrangements between us."Putin said Russia may feel obliged to abandon its obligations under a 1987 missile treaty with the United States if it is not expanded to constrain other missile-armed countries.

...Rice and Gates appeared to reporters in the room to be taken aback at the firm tone of Putin' remarks.

I did think the Russian Foreign Minister showed unusual fluency in the English language when this occurred:

Shortly before the talks with Putin began, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov strolled into the dacha's billiards room, where American reporters had gathered, for a cigarette break. He was asked whether he expected any breakthroughs in the talks.

"Breaks, definitely. Through or down, I don't know," he said.