From Russia with Lies

Go Team Russia!

2010-02-13T12:51:00.000-08:00

Calling it like I see it:

2009-01-31T18:38:00.001-08:00

Russia: A totalitarian regime in thrall to a Tsar who's creating the new Facist empire

2008-05-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

By JONATHAN DIMBLEBY - Daily Mail

As ex-President Putin settles in to his new role as Prime Minister, he has every reason to congratulate himself.

After all, he has not only written the script for his constitutional coup d'etat, but staged the play and given himself the starring role as well.

Of course, he has given a walk-on role to Dmitry Medvedev, his personally anointed successor.

But the transfer of power from Putin to his Little Sir Echo, Medvedev, and the show of military strength with those soldiers and clapped-out missiles in Red Square on Victory Day which followed it last week, made it clear who is really in charge.

No decision of any significance for the Russian people or the rest of us will be made in the foreseeable future without the say - so of Medvedev's unsmiling master.

Just before he stood down as President, Putin declared: "I have worked like a galley slave throughout these eight years, morning til night, and I have given all I could to this work. I am happy with the results."

As he surveys the nation today he reminds me of that chilling poem by Ted Hughes, Hawk Roosting, in which the dreaded bird sits at the top of a tall tree musing: "Now I hold all Creation in my foot - I kill as I please because it is all mine - I am going to keep things like this."

In a way he is right to be so self-satisfied. He has told the Russian people that life is much better than it was before he took over - and, after a journey of some 10,000 miles across the largest country in the world for a new book and BBC TV series, I am in no doubt that the majority of his subjects believe him.

I travelled from cities to towns to villages by road, rail and boat and met a great diversity of people - from St Petersburg glitterati to impoverished potato-pickers, from a witch who charms the sprites of the forest to the mountain herdsmen who worship fire and water, from oilmen to woodcutters.

It was an exhilarating and revelatory experience in a land of extremes. But it was also deeply disturbing.

Despite the fact that Putin's Russia is increasingly autocratic and irredeemably corrupt, the man himself - their born-again Tsar - is overwhelmingly regarded as the answer to the nation's prayers.

Russia has a bloody and tormented history. Its centuries of suffering - its brutalities, its wars and revolutions, culminating in the collapse of communism and the anarchic buffoonery of the Yeltsin years - have taken a terrible psychological toll.

Cynicism and fatalism which eat away at the human psyche have wormed their way into the very DNA of the Russian soul.

In a nation that has not tasted and - with very few exceptions - does not expect or demand justice or freedom, all that matters is stability and security.

And, to a degree, Putin has delivered these twin blessings. But the price has been exorbitant and the Russians have been criminally short-changed.

Putin boasts that since he came into office investment in the Russian economy has increased sevenfold (reaching $82.3 billion in 2007) and that the country's GDP has risen by more than 70 per cent.

Over the same period, average real incomes have more than doubled. But they started from a very low base and they could have done far better.

Nor is this growth thanks either to the Kremlin's leadership or a surge of entrepreneurial energy.

On the contrary, it is almost solely down to Russia's vast reserves of oil and gas.

When Putin came to power, the world price of crude oil was $16 dollars a barrel; it has now soared to more than $120 dollars - and no one knows where or when this bonanza will end.

But this massive flow of funds into the nation's coffers has not been used "to share the proceeds of growth" with the people; to reduce the obscene gulf in income between the rich and poor.

It has not helped to resurrect a health service which is on its knees (and is ranked by the World Health Organisation as 130th out of the 190 countries of the UN), or to rebuild an education system which is so under-funded that the poor have to pay to get their children into a half-decent school or college.

It has not brought gas and running water to the villages where the peasants have been devastated by the collapse of the collectives, or even developed the infrastructure that a 21st century economy needs to compete with the rest of the world.

Russia may be a member of the G8 whose GDP (because of oil) should soon overtake the United Kingdom, but, in many ways, it is more like a Third World country.

Stricken with an epidemic of AIDS and alcoholism which both contribute to a male life expectancy of 58 years, the population is projected to shrink from 145 million to 120 million within a few decades.

So where has all the oil wealth gone? According to an Independent Experts Report, written by two former high-level Kremlin insiders who have had the courage to speak out, "a criminal system of government [has] taken shape under Putin" in which the Kremlin has been selling state assets cheaply to Putin's cronies and buying others assets back from them at an exorbitant price.

Among such dubious transactions the authors cite the purchase by the state-owned Gasprom (run until a few months ago by Dmitry Medvedev) of a 75 per cent share in an oil company called Sifnet (owned by Roman Abramovich, the oligarch who owns Chelsea Football Club).

In 1995 Abramovich, one of Putin's closest allies, paid a mere $100 million for Sifnet; ten years later, the government shelled out $13.7 billion for it - an astronomical sum and far above the going market rate.

Even more explosively, the authors claim the Kremlin has created a "friends-of-Putin" oil export monopoly, not to mention a secret "slush fund" to reward the faithful.

According to an analyst at Moscow's Carnegie Centre, which promotes greater collaboration between the U.S. and Russia, the report is "a bomb which, anywhere but in Russia, would cause the country to collapse".

In Britain such revelations would certainly have provoked mass outrage, urgent official inquiries and a major police investigation - if not the downfall of the government.

But because of Putin's totalitarian grasp on power (he has not only appointed his own Cabinet, which used to be the prerogative of the President, but will remain in charge of the nation's economy), there will be no inquiry.

You can forget any talk from the new President about "stamping out" corruption. This social and economic disease is insidious and rampant.

According to Transparency International - a global society which campaigns against corruption - Russia has become a world leader in the corruption stakes. Foreign analysts estimate that no less than $30 billion a year is spent to grease official palms to oil the wheels of trade and commerce.

But when you raise the subject, Russians shrug their shoulders: "What's the problem?" they retort.

"That's how the system works. It will never change."

And that is because everyone is at it. From corporations (including foreign investors who claim to have clean hands but cover their tracks by establishing local "shell" companies to pay the bribes) to the humblest individuals who buy their way out of a driving ban.

In a country where the "separation of powers" has become a bad joke, the law courts are no less corrupt.

Except perhaps for minor misdemeanours at local level, the judiciary is in thrall to the Kremlin and its satraps.

The threat of prosecution for tax fraud is the Kremlin's weapon of choice against anyone who dares to challenge its hegemony.

When Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the richest man in Russia, used his oil wealth to promote human rights and democracy, Putin detected a threat to his throne.

The oligarch was duly arrested and convicted of fraud. He now languishes in a Siberian jail where he is in the third year of an eight-year prison sentence.

None of this is a matter of public debate in Russia where the media has been muzzled by the Kremlin, their freedom of expression stifled by the government.

Almost every national radio and television station is now controlled directly or indirectly by the state, and the same applies to every newspaper of any influence.

In the heady days immediately before and after the collapse of the Soviet empire, editors and reporters competed to challenge the mighty and to uncover scandal and corruption.

Now they cower from the wrath of the state and its agents in the police and the security services.

That diminishing number who have the courage to investigate or speak out against the abuses perpetrated by the rich and powerful very soon find themselves out of a job - or, in an alarming number of cases, on the receiving end of a deadly bullet.

Some 20 Russian journalists have been killed in suspicious circumstances since Putin came to office. No one has yet been convicted for any of these crimes.

Putin calls the system over which he presides "sovereign democracy". I think a better term is "cryptofascism" - though even the Kremlin's few critics in Russia recoil when I suggest this.

After all, their parents and grandparents helped save the world from Hitler - at a cost of 25 million Soviet lives. Nonetheless, the evidence is compelling.

The structure of the state - the alliance between the Kremlin, the oligarchs, and the security services - is awesomely powerful.

No less worryingly is popular distaste - often contempt - for democracy and indifference to human rights.

In the absence of any experience of accountability or transparency - the basic ingredients of an open society - even the most thoughtful Russians are prone to say: "Russia needs a strong man at the centre. Putin has made Russia great again. Now the world has to listen."

The new Prime Minister has brilliantly exploited the patriotism and latent xenophobia of the Russia people to unify them in the belief that they face a major threat from NATO and the United States.

This combination of national pride and insecurity has been fuelled by the America with its proposed deployment of missiles only a few hundred kilometres from the Russian border, allegedly to counter a nuclear threat from Iran.

No serious defence analyst believes this makes any strategic sense, while even impeccably pro-Western Russians recoil from this crass assertion of super-power hegemony by President Bush.

Similarly most Russians feel threatened - and humiliated - by the prospect that Ukraine and Georgia, once the most intimate allies of the Soviet Union, may soon be enfolded in the arms of NATO.

Georgia, which is struggling to contain a separatist movement that is openly supported by the Kremlin, has the potential to become a dangerous flashpoint in which the Western allies could only too easily become ensnared.

Does this mean - as some have argued - that we are about to face a new Cold War? I don't think so for a moment.

With communism consigned to "the dustbin of history", there is no ideological conflict of any significance. And there is now only one military superpower.

In comparison with America, Russia's armed forces are a joke. Only catastrophic stupidity on either side could lead to a nuclear confrontation.

But this does not mean that we can all breathe a sigh of relief and forget about the Bear.

An autocratic and resurgent Russia that feels bruised and threatened is an unstable beast.

The Kremlin's growing rapprochement with Beijing (the adversaries of a generation ago are now not only major trading partners, but conduct joint military exercises) shifts the balance of power in the world.

And as life on earth becomes less and less secure, with evermore people competing for a dwindling supply of vital resources, Russia, as an energy giant, is once again a big player on the world stage.

Make no mistake, we are in for a very bumpy ride.

Vladimir Putin to be chairman of ruling party

2008-04-17T06:07:00.000-07:00

By Will Stewart in Moscow

Vladimir Putin tightened his grip on power in Russia yesterday by agreeing to become chairman of the ruling United Moscow party when he steps down as president next month and becomes prime minister.

Vladimir Putin 'to wed Olympic gymnast half his age'

Mr Putin will assume the party chairmanship on the day of Mr Medvedev's scheduled inauguration

In a move that will strengthen his long-term hold over Russia, possibly at the expense of his hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev, Mr Putin accepted an offer to become Chairman of the pro-Kremlin party at a congress in Moscow.

As prime minister Mr Putin will control the day-to-day functioning of Russia's government. The additional job will give him sweeping powers over the Duma, Russia's lower house, where United Russia has 315 out of 450 seats, as well as over regional legislatures, also dominated by the party.

Accepting the position, Mr Putin said he was "ready to take added responsibility and head United Russia".

He added: "I promise that I will do everything to strengthen the party's influence and authority, to use its capabilities in the interests of the country's development."

advertisementHis remarks drew a standing ovation from the hundreds of delegates and guests in the packed hall.

Mr Putin has previously declined offers to become the party head. But by becoming party chairman, analysts believe he has put himself in an unassailable position.

Previous presidents - including himself - fired prime ministers almost at will. Now, as party chairman as well, it is unlikely Mr Medvedev would be able to do this to him.

Mr Putin hands over to his hand-picked successor on May 7, and the next day he is expected to become prime minister. But rumours abound that he will seek yet another presidential term in 2012, or perhaps even earlier.

His hold on the majority party in parliament might mean he could, if he chose, force an end to a Medvedev presidency.

Mr Putin will assume the party chairmanship after he leaves office on the day of Mr Medvedev's scheduled inauguration.

He is expected to hold the post for a four-year term, giving him control over the Duma until the next scheduled parliamentary elections in 2011.

Mr Putin, who led the United Russia ticket in the Dec 2 elections but is not a party member, told the congress that he would juggle his party responsibilities with his job as prime minister.

He asked party leader Boris Gryzlov to continue coordinating United Russia's current activities, a move expected to free Mr Putin from the day-to-day duties of running a political party.

His decision to chair the party without joining it will allow him to remain "a sort of supraparty leader," said Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst and Duma deputy with United Russia.

Mr Putin himself has criticised United Russia but has said it is the best party the country has to offer. On Tuesday, he repeated his call for the party to become more open to discussion and establish a more constructive dialogue with society.

He said: "It should be 'de-bureaucratised' and cleansed of strange people pursuing only selfish goals."

United Russia dismisses comparisons with the Soviet-era Communist Party, despite similarities in rituals and routine.

During the two-day congress, party delegates rubber-stamped every proposal submitted by the party leadership. Not a single delegate voted against the proposals or abstained.

The party's key backers are those holding positions of power in most Russian regions.

A Weekend in Sochi

2008-04-06T07:42:00.001-07:00

SOCHI, Russia (AP) - President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to resolve their differences over a U.S. missile defense system at a farewell meeting on Sunday, with Bush saying the system is not aimed at Russia but at regimes that "could try to hold us hostage."

Bush also met Putin's hand-picked successor and pronounced him "a straightforward fellow."

He did not give President-elect Dmitry Medvedev the kind of unvarnished embrace he gave Putin seven years ago, but told reporters after meeting Medvedev: "You can write down, I was impressed and look forward to working with him."

At a joint news conference at Putin's Black sea vacation home, Putin was asked whether he or his protege would be in charge of Russia's foreign policy in early May - when Putin steps down as president and becomes prime minister

Putin said Medvedev would, and that he would represent Russia at the Group of Eight meeting of industrial democracies in July in Tokyo. "Mr. Medvedev has been one of the co-authors of Russia's foreign policy," Putin said. "He's completely on top of things."

At their final meeting as presidents of their respective countries, Bush and Putin complimented each other lavishly, but acknowledged they remained at odds on some major issues, principally missile defense and NATO's eastward expansion.

Putin called the U.S. missile plan - which envisions basing tracking radar sites in the Czech Republic and interceptors in Poland - the most contentious of U.S.-Russian differences and the one the hardest to reconcile. "Our fundamental attitude toward the American plan has not changed," he said.

But, he said, "the best thing is to work jointly" on such a system. "We've got a lot of way to go," Bush acknowledged.

He said he viewed the U.S. plan - as "defense, not offense. And, obviously, we've got a lot of work to convince the experts this defense system is not aimed at Russia."

Bush also said that the system is designed to deal with "regimes that could try to hold us hostage" in a clear reference to Iran. "The system is not designed to deal with Russia's capacity to launch multiple rockets," he said.

The president blamed lingering Cold War thinking by some in both Russia and the United States for making it harder to reach agreement on missile defense. "We spent a lot of time in our relationship trying to get rid of the Cold War," he said. "It's over. It ended."

Both said they agreed to cooperate with one another in continuing to talk about the missile defense system.

National security adviser Stephen Hadley, talking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route back to Washington, was asked if a deal can be struck before Bush leaves office. "I don't think that matters," he replied. "They can leave that to their prospective successors."

Commenting on whether the dispute over expansion of NATO had soured the atmosphere for the Bush-Putin talks, Hadley said, "It didn't in any way poison the Sochi meeting."

During the news conference, Bush bristled at a journalist's question that suggested the two leaders were merely "kicking the can down the road" on the vexing missile defense issue.

"You can cynically say that it is kicking the can down the road," Bush said. "I don't appreciate that, because this is an important part of my belief that it is necessary to protect ourselves."

In a joint declaration, Bush and Putin said: "The Russian side has made clear that it does not agree with the decision to establish sites in Poland and the Czech Republic and reiterated its proposed alternative. Yet, it appreciates the measures that the U.S. has proposed and declared that if agreed and implemented such measures will be important and useful in assuaging Russian concerns."

However, the two sides did agree to "develop a legally-binding arrangement following expiration" in December 2009 of the strategic arms limitation treaty (START). Their joint declaration noted the "substantial reductions already carried out" under that pact, which they said was an important step in reducing the number of deployed nuclear warheads.

On NATO, Russia remains adamantly opposed to the eastward expansion of the alliance into its backyard that Bush has actively championed over Putin's vocal objections.

The Sochi meeting came just days after NATO leaders agreed at a summit in Romania to invite Albania and Croatia to join the alliance. However, the alliance rebuffed U.S. attempts to begin the process of inviting Ukraine and Georgia, both former Soviet republics, to join, although their eventual admission seems likely.

The two leaders agreed to a "strategic framework" to guide future U.S. -Russian relations.

It was seven years ago in June that Bush famously declared he had looked into Putin's eyes at their first face-to-face meeting and "was able to get a sense of his soul" and found him to be honest, straightforward and trustworthy.

Relations grew stronger when Putin stood with the United States after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But the era of cooperation quickly began to unravel as Russia opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and as the Russian leader consolidated his power and took steps to roll back democratic advances.

Asked about those earlier comments about Putin's "soul," Bush said Sunday that his first impression was that he believed Putin would be "the kind of person who would tell me what's on his mind" and that he turned out to be so.

As to the incoming president, Bush said, "I just met the man for 20 minutes."

Still, Bush said, "He seemed like a very straightforward fellow. My first impressions are very favorable."

Bush met with Medvedev shortly before his news conference with Putin and received a pledge from the incoming president to work to strengthen relations between the two countries.

Medvedev told Bush that he hopes to follow in Putin's footsteps in advancing U.S.-Russian relations.

Over the last eight years, Bush and Putin "did a lot to advance U.S.-Russian relations" and that relationship was "a key factor in international security," Medvedev. "I would like to do my part to keep up that work," he added.

Bush told Medvedev, "I'm looking forward to getting to know you so we'll be able to work through common problems and find common opportunities."

Hadley, when asked whether he thought Putin actually was going to cede authority on Russian foreign policy to Medvedev, said, "My guess is that these two men who have worked very closely together for n ow almost two decades will have a very collaborative relationship. That seems to be a good thing, not a bad thing."

Bush and Putin met with news reporters after talks at Putin's vacation house.

Putin greeted Bush at the door of the guesthouse there and escorted him downstairs to a wood-paneled room with tall windows facing the sea. They sat alongside each other in chairs before a fireplace with unlit logs. A crush of cameramen, photographers and reporters crowded the room.

The Russian president said they had started discussing security issues and bilateral matters over dinner on Saturday and would continue their talks today "in a common working manner." Putin put in another plug for the Winter Olympic games that Sochi will host in 2014.

Their introductory remarks were mostly light-hearted. Bush joked about asked to join in a traditional folk dance during the dinner entertainment the previous evening. "I'm only happy that my press corps didn't see me try to dance the dance I was asked to do."

"We have been able to see you're a brilliant dancer," Putin replied good naturedly.

A 'Bout' of Russian terror

2008-04-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

The Washington Times – Ed Royce

April 1, 2008

Maybe Viktor Bout got complacent. Accustomed to profiting in the world's roughest places while brazenly defying law enforcement, this notorious gun runner fell three weeks ago, arrested by Thai authorities in a Drug Enforcement Agency sting in Bangkok. An arms smuggling conviction would put this very dangerous man out of business. He is a survivor, though, and we should not breathe easy until an extradited and shackled Mr. Bout hits United States soil.

A former Soviet pilot dubbed the "Merchant of Death," Mr. Bout has fueled many brutal civil wars, mainly with former East Bloc state arsenals. In the 1990s, he dealt weapons to the several sides fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo and rebels in Angola, breaking international arms embargoes. Some have linked him to the Rwandan genocide. One good customer was the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, who relied on Mr. Bout to arm his reign of terror in West Africa, which landed Taylor in The Hague to face war crimes charges.

This man has plagued four continents. He simultaneously armed the Taliban and the Northern Alliance; he had dealings with Hezbollah and the FARC in Colombia. Indeed, Mr. Bout thought he was negotiating a deal to provide the FARC with millions of dollars in arms when he was arrested. The deal included 100 advanced Russian-made shoulder-fired missiles, capable of downing an aircraft. Federal prosecutors in New York are seeking his extradition to stand trial for providing material support to this Colombian terrorist organization.

Viktor Bout is the model. Unfortunately there exists a class of rogues: gray-area figures who help destroy states and the rule of law while avoiding scrutiny. He and other smugglers are not small-timers. Mr. Bout has amassed a logistical capability that rivals many NATO countries, operating dozens of planes. Today the paramount concern is that his type of global delivery system might transport a nuclear weapon. Their credo is anything for money. The arrest of this man, the best known of the lot, hopefully signals a new alertness to the dangers poised by these networks.

The United States and others have spent much to build stability in Africa. We have been successful in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Millions of lives have been saved by ending these brutal conflicts. But stability is very fragile; all it takes is a few dozen rebels armed by the likes of Viktor Bout to enflame a rebuilding country. Taking on the Bouts of the world would better protect these investments.

Extradition experts give Mr. Bout only a fifty percent chance of facing justice in the United states, though. Thai police have said Mr. Bout's extradition would have to wait until he was tried in Thailand. Meanwhile, the Russian government reportedly is pressuring Thai authorities to set him free. For years, he has operated out of Moscow, in the open, despite an Interpol arrest warrant. He has ties to Russian intelligence. Beware of Russian promises to "try" Mr. Bout at home.

The diplomatic instinct in the State Department may be to play nice with Russia, especially since the Bush administration seeks a long-term agreement on U.S.-Russian relations. Recommendations to press Moscow on Mr. Bout years ago reportedly were set aside to win its cooperation in the war on terrorism. But this man is a terrorist. And there is nothing to be gained from acquiescing to yet another Russian effort at undermining the rule of law. We should be doing all we can to counter any Russian pressure on Bangkok. The arrest of Viktor Bout may signal an intolerance of an intolerable type of character. With a deadly past and dangerous future, he must face justice. Thai authorities should be commended for their cooperation, but only when Mr. Bout is securely on his way to our shores, which given likely Russian machinations, can't happen fast enough.

Representative Ed Royce. California Republican, is ranking member of the Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade Subcommittee.

Head of Russian Armed Forces To Quit: Reports

2008-03-26T13:34:00.001-07:00

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

MOSCOW - The Russian armed forces chief of staff is close to stepping down after falling out with the defense minister, media reports in Moscow said March 25.

Gen. Yury Baluyevsky has already tendered his resignation to President Vladimir Putin, the English language daily Moscow Times said, citing an unnamed ministry source. The source said Baluyevsky had previously asked to be relieved of his post at least once, but had been refused.

Baluyevsky has been angered by a series of reforms pushed by Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, according to Russian media. Serdyukov was appointed last year.

"In the near future, the defense ministry's chief of staff, Yury Baluyevsky, will probably leave," news site www.gazeta.ru reported March 25.

A former furniture dealer, Serdyukov is the second civilian to head Russia's armed forces.

He has ruffled feathers in the ministry with plans to sell off assets, move the navy headquarters from Moscow to Saint Petersburg and with calls for job cuts in the ministry.

The row comes at a sensitive period in Russian politics. Putin is preparing to hand over to his successor Dmitry Medvedev in May, and Moscow is in a stand-off with Western countries over NATO expansion and U.S. plans for a European missile defense shield.

Crackdown on Kremlin foes, business, despite Medvedev's promises of change

2008-03-23T12:54:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press

MOSCOW: Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president-elect, has preached freedom and the rule of law, and raised hopes for an end to government pressure on opposition leaders, rights advocates and businesses whose assets the Kremlin wants to control.

But events of past weeks are adding to mounting suspicions that Medvedev's presidency may not be all that different from that of his steely-eyed predecessor Vladimir Putin.

Since Medvedev's election on March 2, authorities have continued to crack down on human rights activists and political critics. Nor did the election halt the targeting of foreign firms that control major Russian assets, like the British-Russian joint venture TNK-BP.

What is not clear is to what extent the events reflect the continuing influence of Putin and his allies or Medvedev's silent support for Putin's policies.

"Medvedev today is Putin yesterday. There is no change in the regime whatsoever," veteran human rights campaigner Lev Ponomaryev said.

Authorities in the central city of Nizhny Novgorod on Thursday seized computer servers of a longtime campaigner against rights abuses in Chechnya. Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, who has been repeatedly targeted for arrest, said the seizure coincided with searches at apartments of several activists from the Other Russia coalition.

In Russia's second largest city, St. Petersburg, a leader of the liberal political party Yabloko was jailed for nearly three weeks for allegedly interfering with police in a case supporters said was tied to his work organizing an opposition conference. A court on Friday ordered Maxim Reznik's release pending trial.

Officials also have searched the party's St. Petersburg headquarters looking for materials that allegedly could be considered extremist a broad legal term that activists say is used for politically motivated prosecutions.

Other groups report similar pressure. Oleg Kozlovsky, who says he was drafted into the army because of his work with the activist group Oborona, told Ekho Moskvy radio that authorities were trying to evict him from his Moscow apartment, in retaliation for his activities.

Investigators continue to press their case against Mikhail Kasyanov, the former prime minister who was denied a spot on the presidential ballot. Officials accuse him of falsifying signatures on nominating petitions, and his supporters say authorities plans to file criminal charges in an effort to discredit him.

"We've seen in this last two months what the freedom (Medvedev) talks about really means," Andrei Illarionov, a former economic adviser to Putin and now a prominent critic, told reporters Thursday. "Are there any examples of real actions, not just words, that someone can use as proof that Medvedev is a liberal person, economically, politically or over civil rights?"

Medvedev has been credited with supporting more liberal economic and business policies. He reportedly supported, for example, easing restrictions in a bill to limit foreign ownership of Russian publishing companies and Internet providers.

But Medvedev also heads the gas giant OAO Gazprom, the state-controlled monopoly that has continued to play hardball tactics in negotiations over contracts to supply Ukraine with natural gas. Europe, which gets most of its Russian gas via Ukrainian pipeline, has accused Russia of using its energy assets as a political tool.

On Thursday, Russia's top security agency announced that two brothers with dual Russian-U.S. citizenship had been charged with industrial espionage involving Russian oil and gas fields. One of the brothers works for TNK-BP, the British-Russian joint venture whose Siberian fields are coveted by Kremlin-allied business interests.

In recent years, the government has used regulatory and criminal investigations to pressure major energy companies into ceding assets to state-controlled companies.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Krivtsov tried to tamp speculation that the arrest of the TNK-BP worker was linked to troubled ties between Moscow and London. "There's no sense in searching for links between events that are in no way connected to each other," he was quoted by RIA-Novosti as saying.

Many, particularly in the West, pointed to Medvedev's background lawyer, university professor, business executive hoping that the Kremlin's hard-line domestic and foreign policies might soften with his election.

In a pre-election speech, Medvedev promised to champion media freedom, strengthen the judicial system and reform criminal legislation. He returned to those themes Wednesday in an address before the Public Chamber, an advisory body created by the Kremlin.

"A mature civil society is a vital necessity, a foundation, a guarantee of stable development of our nation," he said. "And our task is to create a system when civil society groups participate in setting the government course and assessing its efficiency."

Some observers wonder if Medvedev is just paying lip service to liberal ideals. Putin himself has warned that the West should not expect Medvedev to be a more compliant partner.

Medvedev won't formally take the reins of power until after his May 7 inauguration, and any change in Kremlin policies and practices if they come may come only gradually, and only after Medvedev installs his own team in positions of power.

But Putin is expected to become prime minister, and it remains to be seen whether Medvedev will try to alter his predecessor's course. To do so, he may have to dislodge the siloviki veterans, like Putin, of the intelligence, police and military services whom Putin has installed in positions of power.

Meanwhile, debate is growing among Russia's often fractious opposition groups as to how to continue their fight under Medvedev.

Ponomaryev predicted the Kremlin will seek to create a puppet opposition to create the appearance of a political counterbalance and quiet critics. That theory was bolstered earlier this month by a rare public meeting between Putin and Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the national Yabloko party who, like other opposition figures, has been shut out of politics.

Some opposition groups berated Yavlinsky, who defended himself by saying he raised Reznik's arrest with Putin.

"There is a crisis among the opposition," said Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion who has waged a determined, though largely ineffectual campaign against Putin. "A party that considers itself to be in opposition ought to behave in quite a different manner."

Medvedev Moves to Kremlin Early

2008-03-14T18:10:00.001-07:00

MOSCOW (AP) — He will not be president for weeks, but Dmitry Medvedev has already moved into an office in the Kremlin — the seat of power in Russia.

State-run television showed Medvedev dressing down officials in a Kremlin office Thursday, and the Kremlin press service confirmed that he is now working from an office in the red-brick-walled compound at Moscow's heart rather than Russia's less grandiose government headquarters upriver.

Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin's hand-picked successor, was elected by a large margin March 2 and is scheduled to be inaugurated May 7. The popular Putin is set to become his prime minister, prompting widespread speculation about who will really hold Russia's reins.

The office move looked like part of an effort to create the impression of a smooth transition and boost Medvedev's authority in the eyes of the public and officials used to working for Putin.

Medvedev won more than 70 percent of the votes, according to the official election tally, but Russians saw his victory as a foregone conclusion because of his backing from Putin and the Kremlin in a closely choreographed election. The sense that he was chosen to lead Russians, rather than vice versa, could take the edge off his authority.

State-run television footage of Medvedev's talks with two top officials involved in fishing and ports marked the more soft-spoken former law instructor's latest attempt to embody the firm, powerful image Putin has conveyed in meetings with sometimes squirming officials called to the Kremlin to report to their leader.

Facing the two officials from behind a sizable desk with three telephones at his side, Medvedev grilled them about orders he said they had failed to carry out on time. One of the officials was shown looking down at the desk in front of his and nervously scratching his forehead.

A presidential press service official who refused to be quoted by name, citing policy, would not say when Medvedev had moved into the Kremlin.

She said the change was provided for by a decree Putin signed the day after the election to provide Medvedev with support from the Kremlin staff and other trappings of the presidency.

On that day, Putin, 55, also put the 42-year-old Medvedev in charge of presidential State Council meetings, a symbolic show of trust in his younger protege who has made continuity of Putin's policies his chief promise.

The Trouble with Russia

2008-03-10T08:51:00.000-07:00

By Herbert E. Meyer

Each year a group of KGB Commissars would get together for a weekend of bear hunting. A helicopter would fly them to a clearing deep in the forest, leave them with their guns and camping gear, then pick them up two days later.

Now the hunting weekend has ended, and the Commissars are waiting in the clearing with their equipment and with the carcasses of three bears. The helicopter swoops in and lands, the pilot steps out and takes one look at the waiting cargo.

"Comrade Commissars," the pilot says. "I'm sorry, but I cannot take all three bears on board. The helicopter can carry only two. Please decide which one you wish to leave behind."

Two Commissars grab the pilot's arms, while a third slaps the pilot hard across his face and says, "Captain, this is precisely what you told us last year. As you no doubt will remember, that led to an unpleasant afternoon of beatings and threats against your family if you didn't take all three bears on board. In the end, you did as we ordered. Surely it won't be necessary to repeat all that again?"

The pilot nods glumly, then gets busy loading everything on board and they take off.

Ten minutes later the helicopter crashes. One of the Commissars is killed, and another has two broken legs. A third Commissar crawls out from the wreckage and drags himself over to the dazed pilot, who is lying on the ground nearby. The Commissar slaps the pilot across his face, sits him up and asks, "Captain, where are we?"

The pilot looks around and says, "Same place we crashed last year."

In the Cold War years we learned a great deal about KGB Commissars, and it turns out they all share the same two qualities: They are thugs -- and they are incapable of learning from experience.

Vladimir Putin has the heart and soul of a KGB Commissar -- which, of course, he once was. He's a thug, and he's learned nothing from his country's history. So he's driving Russia into the same ditch the communists drove it into back in the twentieth century. He's creating a one-party dictatorship in which the country's wealth will be owned or controlled by the State. Like all dictators, he's trying to gin up a foreign enemy -- that would be us -- to justify his domestic policies. And he's embarking on a course to achieve his communist predecessors' dream of imposing a sort of Pax Sovietica on the world.

The rigged election of Dmitri Medvedev as Russia's president on March 2 was, of course, merely window-dressing to show that Putin is obeying his country's constitution by limiting himself to two consecutive four-year terms. Putin himself will take the lesser post of prime minister, but there's no doubt he's the man in charge. The general assumption is that Putin will return to the presidency when Medvedev's term expires, or sooner should the presidency become vacant before then. (A friendly word of advice for President Medvedev: Get yourself a food-taster, and send a flunky out each morning to start the car.)

Russia's Three Objectives

All this means trouble for us -- at least in the short term. That's because Russia now has three global objectives, and in the coming years it will move fast to achieve them all:

First, Russia wants to position itself not merely as a leading supplier of energy, but as leader of the world's energy-suppliers. Given its own vast reserves of oil, natural gas and coal, Russia today is growing rich as a major energy provider in Europe. But now Russia is reaching out for raw materials beyond its own borders; for example Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled energy giant, is actively bidding for the rights to develop Nigeria's vast and untapped natural gas reserves. And diplomatically, Moscow is maneuvering in the Mideast and with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez to effectively transfer the leadership of OPEC to the Kremlin.

Second, Russia wants to get back control of what it calls the "near-abroad" - those countries that once were part of the Soviet Union and now are independent. This includes Ukraine and Georgia, whose current instabilities are due, in large part, to Moscow's meddling. It includes the Baltic countries and also Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. And down the road it may well include countries like Romania and even Poland. Putin and his Kremlin team probably won't launch a direct military attack. Why should they, if they can gain control of the "near-abroad" nations by working covertly to ensure that Moscow's friends win elections or, when that fails, by covertly undermining freely elected governments. Their objective is a de facto restoration of the old Soviet Union, under the Kremlin's leadership.

Third, Russia wants a global veto. In other words, Russia wants a world in which nothing of consequence will happen -- such as treaties, trade agreements, regional military alliances, or wars -- unless Russia approves. Russia's quest for a global veto reflects the single most striking difference between it and the United States. While we struggle to lead, Russia wishes merely to obstruct. Alas, today there are a lot of countries -- including ones that we Americans like to think of as allies -- whose primary foreign-policy objective is to weaken the US. They are as frightened by our economic productivity and our technological prowess as by our military strength and, whether or not it makes sense, they want to see the US brought low. Russia will maneuver to unify and lead this effort.

With episodes such as Medvedev's rigged election, last year's natural-gas cut-offs to Ukraine and Georgia, the ongoing diplomatic rows with Great Britain over extradition and the work of the British cultural missions, its sale of advanced surface-to-air missiles to Iran, its deliberately provocative flyovers by long-range bombers of Western territories and US naval formations -- and the untimely, violent deaths of so many Kremlin critics -- a clear picture of what Russia will be like to deal with in the coming years has already developed: it will be brutal, surly, petulant, and generally a pain in the civilized world's rear-end.

How to Deal with Russia

The question is: What should we do about Russia? And the answer is: We should treat Russia as though it were a condition to be endured, rather than a problem to be solved. Dealing with Russia in the coming years will be like dealing with a chronic bad back. Mostly you ignore it and go about your business despite the occasional flare-up; sometimes the pain becomes so intense you've got to gulp down a couple of pills, or a shot of whiskey, and then lie down until the pain subsides; and over time you learn that there are some activities which -- no matter how tempting -- you really must avoid.

Simply put, we should do whatever we think is in our country's best interests and pay as little attention to Russia as possible. Of course, Russia will always be there -- rather like a bad back. This means that everything we try to accomplish -- stabilizing the Mideast, deploying a missile-defense shield, assuring the flow of energy to consumers worldwide and all the rest -- will he harder, take longer, and cost more. Too bad for us, and for the civilized world, but that's just the way it's going to be in the years that lie ahead.

It sounds odd to say this, but a sense of humor will help enormously. That's because Putin's Russia, unlike the old Soviet Union, is thin-skinned and simply cannot stand to be ridiculed. For instance, a few months ago the Russians sent a submarine below the North Pole, dropped a Russian flag to the ocean floor -- and then declared that by doing so they had established sovereignty over the Arctic Ocean and its vast mineral wealth. Then some genius pointed out that if planting a flag conveys sovereignty -- the US owns the moon. We haven't heard a word since from the Kremlin about its claims to the Arctic.

Unfortunately, it won't always be possible to determine in advance just which US policies and initiatives are going to cause minor flare-ups, and which are going to cause excruciating pain. This will be a trial-and-error sort of process in which experience, common sense and good judgment will be not merely helpful, but necessary. (For instance, let us not be too surprised if our support for an independent Kosovo, over Russia's strenuous objections, turns out to ignite a more serious conflagration than we're expecting; it was Russia's total and inflexible support for Serbia in 1914 that started World War I.)

Our efforts to keep Iran's mullahs from getting their hands on nuclear weapons will likely bring us into serous conflict with Russia, and it will take all the fortitude and skill our next President can muster to keep this conflict diplomatic rather than military. But in the years to come the real focus of our trouble with Russia will be -- as usual -- western Europe. And -- as usual -- the Europeans won't be helpful to us. Today they are as frightened by a cut-off of Russian energy supplies as they used to be by a Soviet missile attack. As the continent's economic power wanes, and as its demographic problems mount, Europe wishes merely to be affluently comfortable as it continues its descent into history. Our so-called allies will always take the path of least resistance, and we can safely assume that their fear of Russia, and their lust for money, will exceed their courage to face down Russia or to side with us to keep Western civilization moving forward.

Indeed, this is already happening. As the dollar slides down against the Euro, American tourism is dropping fast and so are American purchases of European products. Today the European hospitality and luxury-goods industries are actively re-orienting their marketing campaigns from American tourists and consumers to Russia's emerging, energy-enriched middle class. (You can see the impact of this re-orientation as you pass through the airports in London, Paris and Rome. You are fairly engulfed by Russian tourists and shoppers -- in their designer clothes, with their Gucci luggage and their gold Rolex watches, and loaded with purchases from Europe's swishiest shops -- as they curse at you and muscle their way past you to the front of the security line. And the Russian men are even nastier.)

The Cold War Won't Return

Although our relations with Russia won't be pleasant -- to say the least -- there isn't going to be a second Cold War. Despite booming energy revenues that are now spreading wealth throughout much of Russian society, the country is dying. Literally. Today the average life span of a Russian male is under 58 years of age; that puts Russia in the Haiti-Bangladesh category, and nowhere near the modern-industrial-world level. Moreover, because the birth rate in Russia is just 1.3 (the replacement level is 2.1) today the number of deaths in Russia vastly exceeds the number of births. Indeed, today in Russia the number of abortions exceeds the number of births. The country's population is dropping fast, from about 143 million now to about 110 million in 2050.

Russia covers nearly one-sixth of the earth's land surface. There simply won't be enough working-age Russians to keep things going and to support the country's huge aging population. Even now -- and with very little publicity -- just like the countries in western Europe Russia is relying heavily on imported workers to keep the place going. For example, several million Kazakhs and Uzbeks are now doing the menial but vital jobs in Russia that other Moslems are doing today in, say, France, Italy and Germany. More importantly, in the coming decades there won't be a sufficient number of young Russian males to sustain the kind of army Russia will require to defend its far-flung borders.

Finally, Russia seems once again to have an chosen economic model that just isn't compatible with achieving and sustaining global power. In effect, Russia wants to become a sort of snowy Saudi Arabia in the sense that it will rely for its wealth on energy exports, rather than on the entrepreneurial talents and technical prowess of its people. And Russia's approach to industrial modernization cannot possibly deliver the kind of long-term productivity gains that drive economic success in today's fast-moving, technology-driven world. For example, the giant Russian automaker GAZ just purchased an entire factory from Daimler-Chrysler that is already 15 years' obsolete. Russian productivity inevitably will fall further and further behind US productivity, which means that despite its energy revenues Russia won't be able to sustain the kind of decades-long, high-tech military competition that a second Cold War would require. And if the US and its allies ever get serious about developing alternate energy sources Russia -- like Saudi Arabia -- will be finished.

While the Putin regime means short-term trouble for us, it also means that another long-term tragedy is looming for the Russian people. Once again, they are living in a police state. Even now, the Kremlin is busily re-building the dreaded Gulag and packing it with Russians whose only crime has been to oppose Putin or to speak out publicly against the dictatorship he and his cronies are tightening every day. And If you're wondering why Russia has squandered the historic opportunity it had to join the civilized world when the Soviet Union collapsed back in 1991, the answer is depressingly simple: Countries are like people; some learn from their mistakes and move on, while others keep making the same mistake over and over again.

Genius in the Genome

The only good thing to emerge from Russia's bleak future will come from the humor, courage, and astounding genius that lie deep within the Russian genome, and that only adversity brings to the surface. Russia's next generation of dissidents will give the world yet another collection of poems and novels that will become among the twenty-first century's greatest works of literature. With a bit of luck, we may even get another bunch of those marvelous Russian jokes in which the individual is always defeated by the boundless, pitiless stupidity of the State.

The patriotic young lieutenant joined the KGB to protect the Motherland from its enemies. But he's having his doubts. Could all these people he's been arresting, torturing, sending to the Gulag and shooting really be foreign spies?

Unknown to the lieutenant, he's being carefully watched by the KGB Commissar in charge of his unit. The wise and experienced Commissar understands that his lieutenant is young and idealistic -- just as he once was. Indeed, the Commissar himself sometimes thinks the regime goes too far. But he has long since learned not to question his Kremlin masters, and instead to devote his energies to rooting out the State's enemies wherever they may be hiding. One afternoon the Commissar invites the young lieutenant for a drink after work.

Now the two officers are sitting in a bar, with their tunics unbuttoned, their ties loosened, drinks in one hand and cigarettes in the other. After a few pleasant moments talking about sports and women, the Commissar leans across the table and speaks very quietly.

"Lieutenant," he says, not unkindly. "I know you're having doubts about our system. At your age, so did I. Sometimes even now I think we go too far. But our enemies are everywhere among us, and to protect our beloved Motherland we must be vigilant and ruthless."

"Thank you for confiding in me, Comrade Commissar," the lieutenant says gratefully. "I want to assure you that my views are precisely the same as yours."

"In that case," the Commissar replies, with a sigh, "I arrest you on a charge of anti-Party deviationism."

Medvedev quick to signal hardline intent

2008-03-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

By Neil Buckley and Catherine Belton in Moscow and Roman Olearchyk in Kiev (Financial Time)

Russia signalled on Monday it was set to continue its hardline approach to opposition and the west under Dmitry Medvedev, its new president, as it cut gas supplies to Ukraine and police detained demonstrators in Moscow.

The moves came just hours after Mr Medvedev, who took 70.2 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s election, said he would take charge of Russian foreign policy after his May 7 inauguration, but pledged to continue the course of his mentor, President Vladimir Putin.

Several hundred members of pro-Kremlin youth groups including Nashi, or “Our Own”, also marched towards the US embassy in Moscow to protest over US foreign policy towards Kosovo and Iraq. The youths carried slogans including “Russia Forward” and “We will stand beside our country”.

Western capitals have seized on Mr Medvedev’s reputation as a comparative liberal among the Russian leadership as providing hope of an improvement in relations, which have sharply cooled under Mr Putin.

But Monday’s actions sent contradictory signals as some western leaders attempted to reach out to the Russian president-elect. Gordon Brown, UK prime minister, congratulated Mr Medvedev on his victory in spite of recent tensions between the two countries, but stopped short of inviting Mr Medvedev to London.

A spokesman for Angela Merkel, German chancellor, said “democratic and constitutional principles were not always complied with” in the election. But officials in her office said Ms Merkel planned to go to Moscow for a few hours on Saturday to meet Mr Medvedev, whom she does not know well.

That meeting, however, will take place against the backdrop of the second energy standoff between Russia and Ukraine since 2006, when gas supplies to Europe were dented during a price dispute. Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly that Mr Medvedev still chairs, cut gas deliveries because of unpaid bills.

Sergei Kupriyanov, a Gazprom spokesman, insisted shipments to Europe would not be affected, but said Ukraine had failed to pay $600m (€395m, £302m) for 1.9bn cubic metres of gas received this year. He said Gazprom was a reliable supplier “but we cannot and should not supply gas without payment”.

While officials and some analysts attempted to portray the move as purely about money, critics suggested its timing sent a message that little had changed in Russia as a result of the presidential campaign.

So, too, did a swoop by hundreds of riot police on dozens of opposition protesters attempting to hold a rally that had not been sanctioned by the authorities. Nikita Belykh, leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces party, was among up to 50 people eyewitnesses said they saw being detained.

Vladimir Ryzhkov, a former independent member of Russia’s parliament who lost his seat because of rule changes last year, said talk of a possible “thaw” under Mr Medvedev was misleading.

“This is one team, it’s a very close team,” he said. “I want to remind you that Medvedev has been in senior posts in Russia for the last eight years and took part in all the major decisions.”

Medvedev Wins; Vows to uphold Putin's legacy

2008-03-02T17:44:00.001-08:00

By Christian Lowe

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's next president Dmitry Medvedev pledged to uphold Vladimir Putin's policies on Monday after winning an election critics said was stage-managed to let the outgoing Kremlin leader keep his grip on power.

Displaying the double act that will be at the helm in Russia, Medvedev's first public appearance after the result became clear was to stand side by side with his mentor Putin on stage at a Red Square concert to thank his supporters.

Medvedev, who will be the youngest Russian leader since Tsar Nicholas II when he is sworn in on May 7, has asked former KGB spy Putin to be his prime minister. Putin, 55, was prevented by term limits from running for re-election.

But it is still not clear which of the two would really be in charge of the vast, nuclear-armed country as their power-sharing arrangement is unusual for a nation used to a single, strong leader.

Many Russians are enjoying the benefits of the biggest economic boom in a generation -- fuelled largely by oil exports -- and they see Medvedev as the natural heir to Putin and the best chance of hanging on to their new-found prosperity.

Kremlin opponents called Sunday's election a one-sided farce after near-complete results showed Medvedev had won just under 70 percent of the vote, even though he did not take part in a single campaign debate.

"This is a secret service KGB operation to transfer power from one person to another," former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who was disqualified from the ballot, told Reuters.

Medvedev said his presidency would be a "direct continuation" of Putin's eight years in office -- a period marked by a single-minded concentration of power in the Kremlin and a willingness to stand up to the West on foreign policy.

But the 42-year-old former law professor who has spent most of his working life in Putin's shadow made clear he would not let his powerful prime minister encroach on his authority.

"The president's main office is in the Kremlin. The prime minister's permanent location is the White House (government headquarters)," he told reporters at his campaign headquarters.

TOUGH POSITIONS

Medvedev signaled Russia under his presidency would not abandon its tough positions on issues such as Kosovo and Washington's plans for a missile shield in Eastern Europe that have put Moscow at odds with the West.

"We should pursue independent foreign policies, the ones we had in the past eight years, with the main goal of protecting our national interests on all fronts by all possible means, but of course sticking to ... legal rules," Medvedev said.

In a further sign Russia was not softening its assertive foreign policy, state-controlled gas giant Gazprom was preparing to reduce supplies to pro-Western neighbor Ukraine at 0700 GMT on Monday over a debt dispute.

Kremlin officials said the fact the election was one-sided did not mean it was unfair. Election chiefs said they knew of no violations that would put the result in doubt.

Western observers monitoring the vote were expected to give an unflattering verdict later on Monday. They have already called the contest unfair because of the blanket television coverage enjoyed by Medvedev.

Civil society groups said millions of public sector workers were coerced into voting for Medvedev in Sunday's election, some on pain of losing their jobs.

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Russia's election "marks a milestone in that country's retreat from democracy ... The Russian people have been denied the opportunity to choose their leaders".

But the criticism from abroad and the small band of Kremlin opponents at home were out of step with the views held by most Russian voters.

"Russia is going through a renaissance and I want the country to continue along this path," said Ismail Uzhakhov, 53, head of a collective farm in the southern Russian region of Ingushetia.

Vladimir Putin's poodle may yet bite

2008-02-29T12:03:00.000-08:00

By Con Coughlin

No one is looking forward to Dmitry Medvedev's decisive victory in this weekend's Russian presidential election more than the incumbent, Vladimir Putin.

Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin: the would-be president still uses the formal 'vy' to address his boss. Ever since Mr Putin realised that not even such an autocratic ruler as himself could tamper with the constitution to secure a third term, he has been scratching around for ways to maintain his stranglehold over the Kremlin's levers of power - while still maintaining the pretence that Russia is now a truly democratic country.

By arranging for his St Petersburg protégé to become Russia's next president, Mr Putin believes he has found the perfect solution. Mr Medvedev will succeed him as president in name only, while Mr Putin, who officially will take up the lesser role of prime minister, will continue to run the country from behind the scenes.

Or at least that's the theory. But there is another school of thought that suggests it would be wrong to underestimate Mr Medvedev's desire to be his own man.

With an opinion poll rating of 79 per cent, Mr Medvedev can claim that he genuinely merits his elevation to one of the world's most powerful positions. That would, of course, overlook the fact that Mr Putin has effectively emasculated all the other serious rivals and, by his ruthless suppression of independent media channels, has succeeded in brainwashing the Russian public into believing that Mr Medvedev is the best candidate for the job.

advertisementBut even though Mr Putin's motives in choosing Mr Medvedev can hardly be described as altruistic, he could still be proved right about the qualities of his anointed successor.

Mr Medvedev might be derided - certainly within Western diplomatic circles - for being Mr Putin's lap-dog, but he has notched up a number of significant achievements of his own, not least of which is the transformation of Gazprom.

Mr Medvedev turned a Soviet-era industrial basket case that made $670 million in 1998 into one of the world's biggest industrial concerns, with profits reaching $25 billion last year. Gazprom is far more than a mere energy provider: it is a crucial political resource that has financed Mr Putin's dream of restoring Russia's international prestige.

And it has also been used to punish former Soviet states that dare to defy the Kremlin's will, such as Ukraine and Georgia, which suddenly found their energy supplies cut off in 2006 when they provoked Mr Putin's ire.

Mr Medvedev's commitment to both the cause of resurgent Russian nationalism and the continued development of Gazprom's business potential were much in evidence in the Serbian capital Belgrade this week, when he met the hardline Serb nationalist prime minister Vojislav Kostunica to sign a deal that will make Russia the main energy provider for Serbia.

What should have been a straightforward business arrangement became a highly significant political gesture, as Mr Medvedev's presence in Belgrade was seen as a welcome gesture of support by Moscow to the beleaguered Serbs after their violent protests against Kosovo's declaration of independence only served to increase their international isolation.

But while Mr Medvedev undoubtedly has the brains for the job, the big question is whether he has the personality and strength of character to lead a vast and complex nation like Russia - while at the same time keeping his uppity prime minister in his place.

Even though Mr Medvedev and Mr Putin go back more than two decades, the two men are like chalk and cheese when it comes to backgrounds and personalities. While Mr Putin is as proud of his working-class roots as he is of his physical prowess - stripping to the waist to show off his impressive physique during a fishing trip last summer - Mr Medvedev's background is altogether more genteel.

Born in 1965 in what was then Leningrad, the young Medvedev was raised by two university professors who were active members of what passed for the intelligentsia. Yulia, his mother, taught Russian literature, while his father was a physics professor.

As a schoolboy, he dreamt of becoming a lawyer, although he also developed an interest in "decadent" Western culture. He took part-time jobs as a construction worker and cleaner to earn money to buy jeans and foreign records, and he was particularly keen on Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. He once lamented the fact that his parents did not have enough money to buy a copy of The Wall on the black market.

His interest in politics developed during the glasnost era of the 1980s when it was clear the Soviet Union's days were numbered. As a law student he actively campaigned for the election of candidates who promoted free market economics, a heretical ideology in Soviet Russia.

And when a candidate whom Medvedev had supported became mayor of St Petersburg, as the city once more became known after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he found himself working in the mayor's office on reconstruction projects. It was while working for the city that he met Mr Putin, a recently decommissioned lieutenant-colonel in the KGB.

From the outset Mr Putin, who was a good decade older, was the more dominant figure, a dynamic in the relationship between the two men that has lasted to this day, with Mr Medvedev still using the formal "vy" to address his boss.

Whether this attitude survives once Mr Medvedev takes over as president of Russia on Sunday is another matter. When Mr Putin became president eight years ago his detractors said he had only got the job because he had made himself indispensable to Boris Yeltsin. It was only after Mr Putin had taken up residence at the Kremlin that he began to show his true colours, and showed himself to be an autocratic Russian nationalist.

In private, Mr Medvedev is said to be more far more liberal, and committed to the rule of law, than Mr Putin, and does not share Mr Putin's boundless enthusiasm for confronting the West at every opportunity.

Perhaps Mr Medvedev will surprise us all after Sunday's election and show that he is his own man, and not Mr Putin's, after all.

Medvedev on Election/Kosovo

2008-02-27T16:15:00.000-08:00

Medvedev Makes Sole Appeal Ahead of Vote

By Vladimir Isachenkov
The Associated Press
Dmitry Medvedev pledged Wednesday to maintain President Vladimir Putin's course and focus on stability as the country counted down the final days to Sunday's presidential election.

Medvedev, who is all but guaranteed to be elected as Putin's successor, also promised to intensify the fight against corruption, cut red tape and encourage small business.

"I will feel obliged to continue the course which has proven its efficiency over the past eight years: the course of President Putin," Medvedev told voters in Nizhny Novgorod.

Medvedev, a first deputy prime minister openly endorsed by Putin, made similar pledges later in a recorded televised address to the nation set against the backdrop of the Volga River city's snow-covered ancient towers.

"We need political stability, we need to keep improving people's lives, develop the economy, ensure reliable protection of Russia's sovereignty and protect citizens' freedoms," Medvedev said, imitating Putin's forceful manner of speaking.

The address, shown repeatedly on state-run television, looked and sounded strongly like a campaign speech, though it was broadcast as part of newscasts. It was preceded by a nearly eight-minute news report on Medvedev's campaign appearance, and most of that report was taken up by his speech to voters.

Medvedev is expected to win Sunday's vote easily, thanks to Putin's broad popularity and the Kremlin's overwhelming control over the national media and political landscape.

Putin, who accepted Medvedev's offer to become prime minister if Medvedev is elected, has said he would retain a leading role.

"I always have felt comfortable working together with the president," Medvedev said, adding that he and Putin have had "comradelike, productive interaction," since the early 1990s.

Medvedev, who has cultivated an image of a liberal and business-friendly leader, also promised to implement new measures to combat endemic official graft.

"A plan for combating corruption will be approved in a few months, and we will start implementing it," he said.

He pledged to rein in corporate raiders who often use force to seize companies from rightful owners and to streamline state regulations to make life easier for small businesses.

"We have had enough of revolutions, instability and declining living standards; we want to have a break," he said. "We need decades of stable development."

Russia's Medvedev Warns Kosovo Independence Could Trigger Unrest
By VOA News

Dmitri Medvedev looks on during a meeting in Nizhny Novgorod, 27 Feb 2008
The man nearly certain to win the Russian presidency Sunday, Dmitri Medvedev, says Kosovo independence has jeopardized security and stability in the Balkans.

Medvedev, campaigning Wednesday in central Russia, said Western recognition of the February 17 independence declaration by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority has put Europe in what he called a difficult situation.

By comparison, he said the United States, which backs Kosovo independence, is not facing the same political risks as Europe.

Russia, Serbia's strongest ally, has condemned the Kosovo declaration, saying it will spark secessionist movements elsewhere in Europe and beyond. Today, Medvedev promised continued political support for Belgrade.

In other developments, the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch is accusing some Serbian ministers of using Kosovo's secession to enflame regional tensions.

In a statement, the organization cited five incidents of violence in the past week, and urged Belgrade to speak with "one voice" against unrest in the region.

In northern Kosovo Wednesday, Serbia's Tanjug news agency says about 100 Serbs in the divided town of Mitrovica were continuing to protest the loss of their jobs. Demonstrators are demanding that the two local courts that employed them be returned to Serbian jurisdiction.

Free speech 'shrinking' in Russia

2008-02-26T18:23:00.000-08:00

Russian freedom of speech is "shrinking alarmingly" under President Vladimir Putin, says Amnesty International.The murders of outspoken journalists go unsolved, independent media outlets have been shut and police have attacked opposition protesters, said the report.

It also said "arbitrary" laws were curbing the right to express opinion and silencing NGOs deemed to be a threat by the authorities.

The report comes ahead of Russian's presidential elections on 2 March.

The director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen, said: "The space for freedom of speech is shrinking alarmingly in Russia and it's now imperative that the Russian authorities reverse this trend."

She said dissent could be a matter of life or death in the case of outspoken journalists like Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in Moscow two years ago.

The 52-page Freedom Limited report warned any opposition demonstrations could suffer heavy clampdowns in the coming days, as Amnesty said had happened in the run-up to past elections.

First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, whom President Putin has named his favoured successor, is expected to be elected in this Sunday's poll.

Putin’s Iron Grip on Russia Suffocates His Opponents

2008-02-24T09:03:00.000-08:00

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY (NYT)

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia — Shortly before parliamentary elections in December, foremen fanned out across the sprawling GAZ vehicle factory here, pulling aside assembly-line workers and giving them an order: vote for President Vladimir V. Putin’s party or else. They were instructed to phone in after they left their polling places. Names would be tallied, defiance punished.

The city’s children, too, were pressed into service. At schools, teachers gave them pamphlets promoting “Putin’s Plan” and told them to lobby their parents. Some were threatened with bad grades if they failed to attend “Children’s Referendums” at polling places, a ploy to ensure that their parents would show up and vote for the ruling party.

Around the same time, volunteers for an opposition party here, the Union of Right Forces, received hundreds of calls at all hours, warning them to stop working for their candidates. Otherwise, you will be hurt, the callers said, along with the rest of your family.

Over the past eight years, in the name of reviving Russia after the tumult of the 1990s, Mr. Putin has waged an unforgiving campaign to clamp down on democracy and extend control over the government and large swaths of the economy. He has suppressed the independent news media, nationalized important industries, smothered the political opposition and readily deployed the security services to carry out the Kremlin’s wishes.

While those tactics have been widely recognized, they have been especially heavy-handed at the local level, in far-flung places like Nizhny Novgorod, 250 miles east of Moscow. On the eve of a presidential election in Russia that was all but fixed in December, when Mr. Putin selected his close aide, Dmitri A. Medvedev, as his successor, Nizhny Novgorod stands as a stark example of how Mr. Putin and his followers have established what is essentially a one-party state.

Mr. Putin’s Russia is not the Soviet Union. For most Russians, life is freer now than it was in the old days. Criticism of the Kremlin is tolerated, as long as it is not done in any broadly organized way, and access to the Internet is unfettered. The economy, with its abundance of consumer goods and heady rate of growth, bears little resemblance to the one under Communism.

Still, as was made plain in dozens of interviews with political leaders, officials and residents of Nizhny Novgorod over several weeks, a new autocracy now governs Russia. Behind a facade of democracy lies a centralized authority that has deployed a nationwide cadre of loyalists that is not reluctant to swat down those who challenge the ruling party. Fearing such retribution, many of the people interviewed for this article asked not to be identified.

The government has closed newspapers in St. Petersburg and raided political party offices in Siberia. It was hardly unusual when in Samara, in the nation’s center, organized crime officers charged an opposition campaign official with financial crimes shortly before the December parliamentary elections and froze the party’s bank accounts.

Here in this historic region on the Volga River, Mr. Putin’s allies now control nearly all the offices, and elections have become a formality. And that is just as it should be, they said.

“In my opinion, at a certain stage, like now, it is not only useful, it is even necessary — we are tired of democratic twists and turns,” said the leader of Mr. Putin’s party in Nizhny Novgorod, Sergei G. Nekrasov. “It may sound sacrilegious, but I would propose to suspend all this election business for the time being, at least for managerial positions.”

Mr. Putin, who intends to remain in power by becoming prime minister under Mr. Medvedev, has in recent days declared that Russia has a healthy democracy, a renewed sense of national pride and a prominent role on the world stage. His supporters in Nizhny Novgorod point to his high approval ratings as evidence that his policies work.

A refrain often heard here and across Russia is that the distressing years right after Communism’s collapse left people craving stability and a sturdy economy far more than Western-style democracy. These days, they care little if elections are basically uncontested as long as a strong leader is in charge.

“There is some hope for us now,” said Nina Aksyonova, 68, a Nizhny Novgorod resident, explaining Mr. Putin’s popularity.

Propaganda Onslaught

Nizhny Novgorod, an industrial center with 1.3 million residents, was known as Gorky during the Communist era, when it was closed to foreigners and was home to the dissident physicist Andrei D. Sakharov, who was sent into internal exile here. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, it became a hotbed of liberalism, earning international recognition after officials sought to jettison the old sclerotic economic structure and embrace what were considered far-sighted political reforms.

Today, authority flows from the Kremlin to a regional governor appointed by Mr. Putin, who abolished the election of governors in Russia in 2004. The governor, Valery P. Shantsev, was brought in from Moscow and is charged with running the region and ensuring that Mr. Putin’s party, United Russia, wins elections. The lines between the government and party have become so blurred that on election day in December, regional election commission members wore large United Russia badges.

Boris Y. Nemtsov became a political star in Russia and the West as governor of Nizhny Novgorod and deputy prime minister in the 1990s, but in recent months he and his opposition party have taken a battering here. Regional and national television stations, controlled by the Kremlin and its surrogates, have repeatedly attacked him — calling him everything from a corrupt bureaucrat to a traitor.

“His career has been accompanied by scandals,” went a typical report on the popular Channel One right before the December elections. “It was the elderly who were the first to feel the results of the work of Nemtsov’s government on their purses. Pensions dropped to the lowest level in all Russia’s history. Boris Nemtsov used to gather the press just to say that he did not care who the pensioners, deprived of money, would vote for. According to the plans of young reformers, only the strongest were supposed to live until the next century.”

Meanwhile, a different kind of propaganda war was being waged on the streets. Russia has relatively conservative attitudes toward homosexuality, and all autumn long Nizhny Novgorod was blanketed with tens of thousands of leaflets saying that Mr. Nemtsov’s liberal, pro-Western opposition party, the Union of Right Forces, ardently favored gay rights and employed canvassers with AIDS. Neither was true.

The leaflets often included the name and phone number of a leader of the party’s regional candidate slate, Andrei Osipenko. Some had condoms attached and announced offers to send supporters to a gay-pride event in Amsterdam.

Intimidation and violence came next. Businesses cut off donations after receiving threats from government officials, said Sergei Veltishchev, an organizer for the Union of Right Forces. Someone obtained the confidential list of party members — the party officials say they suspect that it was the security services — and hundreds of menacing phone calls were made to volunteers, saying they or their families would be hurt if they helped the party.

The party was refused advertising space on everything from billboards to newspapers to television. When Mr. Nemtsov tried to campaign in Nizhny Novgorod in the fall, no one would rent him a hall. In November, the party headquarters were ransacked and spray-painted with profanities and graffiti that called it the “Party of Gays.”

A few weeks before the elections, Mr. Osipenko gave up, renouncing his party at a news conference that was heavily covered on state-controlled television and had the feel of the Stalinist-era public confessions that followed show trials. Other party officials did the same.

The party’s remaining candidates in the region were too fearful to campaign.

“You begin to think: you have a family, you have a business, and you may value this significantly more than a political career,” said Artur Nazarenko, an official with the Union of Right Forces. The party, once a regional power, received only 1 percent of the vote in the parliamentary elections, both in the Nizhny Novgorod region and nationally.

Other opposition figures in Nizhny Novgorod have been treated just as harshly over the past year. Leaders of a loose coalition called Other Russia have been repeatedly arrested, with some charged with inciting terrorism. When the group held a demonstration here last March, local television stations tried to scare away the public, labeling the event a gathering of either racist skinheads or gay rights advocates.

“Now about the so-called opposition, though there is a big doubt that it exists at all in the country,” an announcer asserted on the Seti NN channel. “They have been acting in violation of the law.”

The mayor of Nizhny Novgorod, Vadim Bulavinov, a United Russia leader, said the opposition had failed because it was poorly organized.

“If an organization is weak because people do not want to work for it or to help it, why should United Russia be blamed for that?” the mayor said. “I think that if the opposition parties want to find out who is guilty, they need to look in the mirror.”

Attacks on the Press

With the opposition suppressed in the months before the December elections, anti-Kremlin activism coalesced around independent newspapers and nonprofit groups, making them another target of the security forces.

In August, police officers broke down the door to the local offices of Novaya Gazeta, an opposition paper that had criticized Governor Shantsev and Mayor Bulavinov. Investigators accused the paper of using unlicensed software and hauled away its computers, shutting down the paper until after the elections.

Prosecutors also closed or prevented the distribution of two other regional newspapers, Leninskaya Smena and Trud, and conducted aggressive inquiries into the finances of several others. “It is a demonstration of force: ‘If you behave wrong, we will punish you,’ ” said Zakhar Prilepin, Novaya Gazeta’s editor in Nizhny Novgorod.

The regional prosecutor, Valery Maksimenko, did not respond to several requests for comment.

On the day of the Novaya Gazeta raid, the police removed computers from the offices of the Foundation to Support Tolerance, a nonprofit group that has been harassed for four years after criticizing the Kremlin and the war in Chechnya.

The authorities seem especially distrustful of the foundation because it receives money from the National Endowment for Democracy, an American nonprofit group financed by the United States government. The Kremlin has blamed Western pro-democracy groups for fomenting popular uprisings in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere in recent years, and vowed that that sort of thing would never happen in Russia.

The Federal Security Service, known by its initials in Russian, F.S.B., has interrogated the tolerance foundation’s workers, family members and friends. Its leaders, Stanislav Dmitriyevsky and Oksana Chelysheva, have received death threats. And as part of a smear campaign, the Volga regional television station showed Russian soldiers being beheaded in Chechnya and said the group had justified such killings.

In October, when the foundation held a memorial for Anna Politkovskaya, an opposition journalist killed in 2006, several foreign human rights advocates were arrested in Nizhny Novgorod. The police again raided the foundation’s offices, and the authorities froze its bank accounts, saying it supported terrorism.

“The ruling elite nowadays has no ideology,” Ms. Chelysheva said. “Their only aim is to obtain as much power as possible, to keep this power, by whatever means, and to profiteer off this power. In this respect, these people, who are so cynical, are much more dangerous than was the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R.”

The group had been called the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, and it focused on exposing what it deemed human rights violations in the Russian war against separatists in Chechnya. But it ran afoul of the Kremlin, which deemed its work as little more than collaboration with the enemy.

Prosecutors accused the society of extremism and shut it down after it republished letters from two Chechen separatist leaders. Mr. Dmitriyevsky was convicted of inciting ethnic hatred and received a suspended prison sentence.

A Push for Legitimacy

While the Kremlin has succeeded in discrediting and stifling opposition parties, it has nonetheless faced a predicament of its own making. Elections draw little public interest now that they are essentially noncompetitive, and leaders of the governing party fear a low turnout. If relatively few people vote, then Mr. Putin’s claim to a widespread following could be called into question. So the authorities have also focused their energies on getting people to the polls.

Though Mayor Bulavinov and Mr. Nekrasov, the United Russia leader, said residents were not compelled to support the party, numerous interviews in the city and a review of municipal records indicated otherwise. It was clear that strong-arm tactics were common before the December elections in Nizhny Novgorod, and the opposition said it expected them again before the presidential election on March 2.

At the GAZ vehicle factory, known for its Volga sedan, workers were not only ordered to vote and then phone in from the polling place afterward: some had to obtain absentee ballots and fill them out in front of their bosses.

“If you don’t vote for United Russia, it will be very bad,” a worker named Aleksandr recalled, characterizing the pressure on the rank and file.

The coercive voter drive clearly had the desired effect, in the Kremlin’s view at least. After the election, the GAZ president, Nikolai Pugin, who is a senior United Russia leader and a regional lawmaker, announced that nearly 80 percent of his workers had voted, far higher than the city’s overall turnout, 51 percent. The Kremlin rewarded Mr. Pugin by making one of his workers a deputy in the federal Parliament.

Asked this month about the high turnout, Mr. Pugin said in an interview that his workers had voted freely. “People see positive changes and as a result, they express their opinion,” he said.

The public schools also were caught up in the campaign. Parents at some schools were ordered to attend mandatory meetings with representatives of United Russia, and the children were used to drag their parents to the polls.

“It was the same scenario at all the schools,” a teacher said. “And it was all from the city’s leadership. The school directors were given instructions, and they carried them out.”

Regional officials were vigilant about developments at local universities, particularly two of the largest, Lobachevsky State and Volga State. Students said they were warned not to join marches sponsored by the Other Russia coalition. And they said that before the elections, administrators issued a threat: if you do not vote for the ruling party, you will be evicted from your dorms.

“Everyone was frightened, and our group, in full, went and voted, like a line of soldiers marching,” said a Volga State student.

Administrators at both universities said the students’ statements about pressure were false.

Yet it did not stop with the voting.

Shortly after election day, several hundred Lobachevsky students were told that they were being bused to Moscow, but the university would not say why. When they were let off near Red Square, they found themselves among a huge throng of people.

It was only then that they realized that they had become unwilling participants in a rally sponsored by Nashi, a fiercely pro-Kremlin youth group, to celebrate United Russia’s triumph and to congratulate Mr. Putin.

Putin warns West over Kosovo dispute

2008-02-22T18:58:00.001-08:00

By MIKE ECKEL, Associated Press Writer

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a sharp warning to the West on Friday about the consequences of recognizing Kosovo's independence, saying the decision would "come back to knock them on the head."

The televised comments, made during an informal meeting of leaders from former Soviet republics, were the strongest by the Kremlin leader since Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders issued their declaration of independence from Russian-allied Serbia.

Earlier in the day, Russia's envoy to NATO warned the alliance against overstepping its mandate in Kosovo and said Moscow might be forced to use "brute military force" to maintain respect on the world scene. Other Russian officials sought to tone down that view, saying the dispute should be resolved peacefully.

Putin used the meeting of presidents from the Commonwealth of Independent States — a loose, Russian-dominated organization of former Soviet states — to lambast Western nations that have recognized Kosovo's independence. Among those are the United States, Britain, Germany and France.

"The Kosovo precedent is a terrifying precedent. It in essence is breaking open the entire system of international relations that have prevailed not just for decades but for centuries. And it without a doubt will bring on itself an entire chain of unforeseen consequences," Putin said.

Governments that have recognized Kosovo "are miscalculating what they are doing," he added. "In the end, this is a stick with two ends and that other end will come back to knock them on the head someday."

Moscow has heatedly protested the Kosovo declaration, which has sparked violent protests by Serbs and international squabbling over whether to recognize the fledgling nation.

Russia's NATO ambassador, Dmitry Rogozin, said the Russian military might get involved if all European Union nations recognized Kosovo as independent without United Nations agreement.

"If the European Union works out a single position or NATO goes beyond its current mandate in Kosovo, these organizations will conflict with the United Nations," Rogozin said in a televised hookup from NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

If that happens, Russia "will proceed from the assumption that to be respected, we have to use brute military force," he said, although he later said that Russia was not making plans for any such confrontation.

Rogozin's comments sparked quick reaction. Nicholas Burns, the State Department's third-ranking official, called them "highly irresponsible."

"This cynical and ahistorical comment by the Russian ambassador should be repudiated by his own government," Burns said.

Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Russia's envoy to the European Union, used a more conciliatory tone, saying the Kosovo problem should be resolved exclusively by political means.

Russia has staunchly supported Serbia in opposing Kosovo's secession, and has vowed to block any effort in the United Nations to recognize its independence.

Russia has been joined in its opposition by China and others, including EU member Spain, who worry the Kosovo example might be viewed as a precedent by separatists in other places.

Predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo, which has been governed by a U.N. mission and patrolled by NATO peacekeepers since 1999, had been widely expected to declare independence from Serbia after internationally mediated talks on its future fell apart last year.

___

2008

2008-02-21T19:23:00.001-08:00

1984

2008-02-20T09:34:00.000-08:00

Russia denounces Kosovo independence

2008-02-17T09:51:00.001-08:00

(AP)Russia denounced Kosovo's declaration of independence from its ally Serbia on Sunday and called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

Kosovo's parliament approved a declaration of independence from Serbia, backed by the U.S. and European allies but bitterly contested by Serbia and Russia.

The Foreign Ministry said Russia supports Serbia's "just demands to restore the country's territorial integrity" and wants the Security Council to renew efforts to reach a settlement on the issue of Kosovo's status.

Kosovo's independence declaration violates Serbia's sovereignty and the U.N. Charter and threatens "the escalation of tension and ethnic violence in the region, a new conflict in the Balkans," the ministry said in a statement. It warned other nations against "supporting separatism" by recognizing Kosovo.

Kosovo has formally remained a part of Serbia even though it has been administered by the U.N. and NATO since 1999, when NATO airstrikes ended former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.

Russia has stressed its opposition to any decision on Kosovo's status that is not accepted by Serbia. It has warned that recognition of Kosovo by the United States and other nations would encourage separatists in the former Soviet Union, across Europe and around the world.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov echoed the ministry statement in comments on state-run Vesti-24 television. He called Kosovo's declaration an "illegitimate act" and said Russia supports what he called Serbia's pledges to struggle in a constructive way to keep its borders intact.

"All possible international mechanisms, first of all the United Nations and its Security Council" would be called upon to address the issue," Peskov said.

He said Russia would closely monitor the response of other countries to the declaration.

Kremlin's grip puts Medvedev vision in doubt

2008-02-16T05:52:00.000-08:00

By Catherine Belton in Moscow (Financial Times)

Dmitry Medvedev, who is most likely to be Russia's next president, yesterday unveiled a liberal-sounding economic agenda to cut back red tape and clamp down on corruption. However, he offered little sign that he would attempt to carve out a path independent from Vladimir Putin.

"One of the key elements of our work in the next four years will be ensuring the independence of the legal system from the executive and legislative branches of power," Mr Medvedev said in a speech, just two weeks before presidential elections on March 2. As Mr Putin's preferred successor, he is expected to sweep to victory.

Mr Medvedev said he wanted to make freedoms, both economic and personal, the cornerstone of his policies, in which the rule of law and property rights would reign. But economists and politicians warned it was far from clear whether Mr Medvedev would be able to push through any such liberal initiatives when faced with the vested interests of the Kremlin so long as he remained in the shadow of his predecessor.

Mr Putin, who will stay largely in charge of economic policy as prime minister to his protégé, has already upstaged Mr Med-vedev by presenting his own strategy for Russia's development up to 2020 last week.

In his last annual press conference this week before he steps down as president, Mr Putin staked out a powerful role for himself implementing his development plan. He said Mr Medvedev's economic programme, in contrast, would deal only with the next four years and merely "add detail" to his own vision.

"We've tried to do this all before. A great deal was not implemented," said Yevgeny Yasin, rector of Moscow's Higher School of Economics and a co-author of Mr Putin's programme in 2000. "Instead, they carried out completely different tasks which the country could have done without, such as increasing the role of the state, and control over the electoral system and the media."

Mr Yasin said the sudden inflow of oil dollars as prices soared soon after Mr Putin came to power led the Kremlin to ditch most of the plan for liberal and institutional reform that he had helped plot. Instead of cutting back on the number of state officials, under Mr Putin their number had grown, as had corruption, Mr Yasin said.

Mr Medvedev, speaking in Siberia, repeated calls by Mr Putin for a reduction in value added tax and presented a detailed breakdown of ways he wanted to raise living standards via improvements in education and healthcare.

In a rare sign he might pursue a more liberal agenda than Mr Putin, he called for a reduction in the number of state officials on the boards of some of Russia's biggest corporations. "They should be replaced by truly independent directors, which the state would hire to implement its plans," he said.

Rice attacks ‘reprehensible’ Putin warnings

2008-02-14T05:08:00.000-08:00

By Daniel Dombey in Washington (Financial Times)

Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, on Wednesday highlighted the tense relations between Moscow and Washington when she hit out at Russia’s “reprehensible” rhetoric and said she would appoint a special energy co-ordinator for central Asia, a region dominated to date by Russian energy interests.

Appearing at the Senate’s foreign relations committee, Ms Rice responded fiercely to questions about recent Russian behaviour, including President Vladimir Putin’s suggestion this week that Ukraine could be targeted with nuclear missiles and his warning of a new arms race with the west.

“The unhelpful and, really, I will use a different word, reprehensible rhetoric that is coming out of Moscow is unacceptable,” Ms Rice said.

Relations between Moscow and Washington have hardened in the wake of disputes over Russia’s objections to proposed US missile defence bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as US concerns about what it sees as Mr Putin’s use of intimidation at home and abroad.

But the US secretary of state emphasised that she believed the principal areas of difficulty related to the post-cold war map of Europe – on issues such as North Korea and Iran, the two countries co-operated much more closely.

“The Soviet Union . . . is gone forever, and I hope that Russia understands that,” she said. “We are absolutely devoted to the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine and of other states that were once a part of the Soviet Union.”

Ms Rice was prodded by Richard Lugar, the committee’s ranking Republican, to respond to Russian initiatives with countries such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Serbia and Bulgaria that seem to have cemented Moscow’s position as gas supplier to the rest of Europe.

“I do intend to appoint, and we are looking for, a special energy co-ordinator who could especially spend time on the central Asian and Caspian region,” she replied. “It is a really important part of diplomacy. In fact, I think I would go so far as to say that some of the politics of energy is warping diplomacy in certain parts of the world.”

Privately, many US officials complain that the European Union has not made a more effective attempt to build relations with the central Asian countries that provide Russia with an increasingly important part of its gas supply, or to forge a common policy on Russia.

Putin's Torture Colonies

2008-02-13T09:39:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal

February 12, 2008

"The protest began after OMON [riot police] had been brought to correctional colony No. 5 (Amur Oblast, Skovorodino Rayon, village Takhtamygda) and started massive beatings of the prisoners. People in camouflage and masks were beating with batons inmates taken outside undressed in the freezing cold. . . . As a protest, 39 prisoners immediately cut their veins open.

"Next day, on 17 January, the 'special operation' was repeated in an even more humiliating and massive form. At that time, about 700 inmates cut their veins open. . . ."

The description here comes from a report received by the Moscow-based Foundation for Defense of Rights of Prisoners. The time reference is to 2008 -- that is, last month. This is not Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Russia. It's Vladimir Putin's. And correctional colony No. 5, located not far from the Manchurian border, does not even make the list of the worst penal colonies in the country.

That distinction belongs to the newly revived institution of Pytochnye kolonii, or torture colonies. After all but disappearing in the 1990s under the liberal regime of Boris Yeltsin, there are now about 50 pytochnye kolonii among the roughly 700 colonies that house the bulk of Russia's convict population, according to FDRP cofounder Lev Ponomarev. And while they cannot be compared to the Soviet Gulag in terms of scope or the percentage of prisoners who are innocent of any real crime, they are fast approaching it in terms of sheer cruelty.

The cruelty to prisoners often begins prior to their actual sentencing. "When people are transported from prisons to courts to attend their hearings, they are jammed in a tiny room where they can barely stand. There's no toilet; if they have to relieve themselves, it has to be right there," says Mr. Ponomarev. "Then they are put on trucks. It's extremely cold in winter, extremely hot in summer, no ventilation, no heating. These are basically metal containers. They have to be there for hours. Healthy people are held together with people with tuberculosis, creating a breeding ground for the disease."

Once sentenced, prisoners are transported in packed train wagons to distant correctional colonies that, under Russian law, range from relatively lax "general regime" colonies to "strict," "special," and (most terrifying of all) "medical" colonies. Arrival in the camps is particularly harrowing. According to prisoner testimonies collected by Mr. Ponomarev, in the winter of 2005 convicts from one torture colony in Karelia, near the Finnish border, were shipped to the IK-1 torture colony near the village of Yagul, in the Udmurt Republic, about 500 miles east of Moscow.

"The receipt of convicts 'through the corridor' takes place in the following manner," Mr. Ponomarev reports. "From the [truck] in which a newly arrived stage [of prisoners] is brought... employees of the colony line up, equipped with special means -- rubber truncheons and dog handlers with work dogs. . . . During the time of the run, each employee hits the prisoner running by with a truncheon. . . . The convicts run with luggage, which significantly complicates the run. At those [places] where employees with dogs are found, the run of the convict is slowed by a dog lunging from the leash."

The prison gantlet is just the welcome mat. At IK-1, a prisoner with a broken leg named Zurab Baroyan made the mistake of testifying to conditions at the colony to a staff representative of the Human Rights Ombudsman of the Russian Federation. "After this," Mr. Baroyan reported, the commandant of the colony "threatened to rot me in the dungeon. They did not complete treating me in the hospital. The leg festers [and] pus runs from the bandage. . . The festering has crossed over to the second leg."

Not surprisingly, suicide attempts at these colonies are common. One convict, named Mishchikin, sought to commit suicide by swallowing "a wire and nails tied together crosswise." As punishment, he was denied medical assistance for 12 days. Another convict, named Fargiyev, was held in handcuffs for 52 days after stabbing himself; he never fully recovered motor function in his hands.

WSJ columnist Bret Stephens speaks to OpinionJournal.com's Brendan Miniter about the revival of prisoner colonies in Russia and the subject of torture.

Even the smallest of prisoner infractions can be met with savage reprisals. In one case, authorities noticed the smell of cigarette smoke in a so-called "penalty isolator" cell where seven convicts were being held. "A fire engine was called in. . . . The entire cell, including the convicts and their personal things, was flooded with cold water." The convicts were left in wet clothes in 50 degree Fahrenheit temperatures for a week.

As a legal matter, the torture colonies don't even exist, and Mr. Ponomarev doubts there has ever been an explicit directive from Mr. Putin ordering the kind of treatment they mete. Rather, for the most part the standards of punishment are determined at the whim of colony commandants, often in areas where the traditions of the Gulag never went away.

That doesn't excuse the Kremlin, however. Under Yeltsin, the prison system had operated under a sunshine policy, as part of a larger effort to distance Russia from its Soviet past. "But when Putin came to power, a new tone was set," Mr. Ponomarev says. "The sadists who had previously been 'behaving' simply stopped behaving."

Now reports of torture are systematically ignored or suppressed while regional governments refuse to act on evidence of abuse. Commandants at "general regime" colonies can always threaten misbehaving convicts with transfer to a torture colony -- a useful way of keeping them in line. The Kremlin, too, benefits from the implied threat. "The correct word for this is Gulag, even if it's on a smaller scale," warns Mr. Ponomarev. "This is the reappearance of totalitarianism in the state. Unless we eradicate it, it will spread throughout the entire country."

Readers interested in a closer look at what is described above may do a YouTube search for "Yekaterinaburg Prison Camp." The short video, apparently filmed by a prison guard and delivered anonymously to Mr. Ponomarev's organization, is a modern-day version of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." It isn't easy to watch. But it is an invaluable window on what Russia has become in the Age of Putin, Person of the Year.

Russia's Putin lashes out at West's "arms race"

2008-02-08T06:05:00.000-08:00

By Michael Stott and Oleg Shchedrov

President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of unleashing a new arms race on Russia's borders on Friday in a speech that is likely to provide a blueprint for his successor's policies.

Laying out his legacy three months before he is to step down, Putin said Russia had to wean itself off energy exports, compete in the world economy and stand up to the West.

In an address containing long passages of tough rhetoric aimed at the West, Putin said NATO expansion and U.S. plans for a missile defense shield in eastern Europe had touched off an arms race.

"It's not our fault, we didn't start it. ... funneling multibillions of dollars into developing weapons systems.

"NATO itself is expanding. It's approaching our borders. We drew down our bases in Cuba and in Vietnam. What did we get? New American bases in Romania, Bulgaria. A new third missile defense region (the U.S. defense shield) in Poland, where it's being built," Putin told the State Council.

"It's already clear that a new arms race is being unleashed in the world ... We must not allow ourselves to be drawn into this."

Putin's address to the State Council, which gathers minister, regional governors and lawmakers, will be one of his last keynote speeches before he steps down.

It was also widely regarded as a manifesto for Dmitry Medvedev, the man he has endorsed to succeed him.

Medvedev, a 42-year-old first deputy prime minister and loyal Putin ally, said this week he was not issuing his own program because it would be no different from his mentor's policies.

Putin, 55, opened his speech by emphasizing how far Russia had come in the eight years he had been in power.

In 2000, Russia was reeling from economic collapse, insurgents were marauding through the country and the Kremlin was being manipulated by tycoons, he said.

"Wealthy Russia had turned into a country of impoverished people. In these conditions, we started to implement our program to take the country out of crisis," he said.

"We have been able to rid ourselves of the practice of taking state decisions under pressure from financial groups and media magnates."

BOOMING ECONOMY

He hailed the strength of the Russian economy, pointing to a boom in investment, state coffers which are now full and gross domestic product growth of more than 8 percent a year.

But Putin also said Russia needed to develop its human capital if it was to compete in the global economy and reduce its dependence on oil exports.

He proposed tax breaks for companies investing in employees' training and healthcare and said the government should help promote scientific research and innovation.

Putin also touched on Russian democracy, which has come under close international scrutiny three weeks before the presidential election.

Opposition parties say the vote is a farce and slanted in Medvedev's favor. Europe's main election watchdog announced on Wednesday it was pulling out of monitoring the March 2 vote because of Moscow's obstruction.

Putin said democracy was a cornerstone of Russian society but that political parties who took money from foreign governments were guilty of "immoral" behavior and "demeaning the Russian people."

The man behind the curtain

2008-02-04T10:26:00.000-08:00

The Washington Times - Oliver North

February 3, 2008

In the movie "The Wizard of Oz," Dorothy's little terrier Toto pulls aside a curtain to reveal that the awesome "wizard" is really a little man frantically pulling levers to create an illusion of power.

Moscow is not quite the "Emerald City" — but Vladimir Putin is certainly acting like the wizard — and seems intent on trying to re-create the "Iron Curtain." Worse still, leaders here in the United States and in Western Europe appear to be as fearful as Dorothy's craven lion in looking at what is really going on behind the curtain.

In December, the editors of Time magazine glossed over Mr. Putin's repression of political dissidents, interference in the affairs of other nations and willingness to support Iranian nuclear ambitions to choose the Russian strongman as their "Person of the Year." Since then the former KGB officer has made it clear to anyone who cares to look that he intends to remain in power once his term as president expires in May. The old Soviet leaders of yesteryear would be proud to see the political machinations in Moscow.

Mr. Putin is barred by the Russian constitution from seeking a third consecutive term as president. Undaunted by such a statutory trifle, he has decided to run as a United Russia Party candidate for a seat in the Russian Duma. Once elected to the parliament, it is foregone that he will then become prime minister — a post from which he can continue to exercise control over international and domestic affairs of state.

To ensure success, he has hand-picked as his presidential successor, Dmitri Medvedev, now Russia's deputy prime minister and head of the country's state-run natural gas monopoly, Gazprom. If all goes as planned, Mr. Putin would be able to reclaim the Russian presidency in 2012.

Apparently not satisfied that this outcome is all but guaranteed, Mr. Putin has also had Russia's Central Electoral Commission jump into the fray. The commission, headed by Vladimir Churov, a Putin crony, is supposed to ensure that multi-party and multicandidate elections in post-Soviet Russia are carried out fairly. But if the commission ever did that, it doesn't now.

Last week, the Russian Election Commission denied a place on the March 2 presidential ballot for Mr. Putin's principal opponent, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. Mr. Kasyanov, a close associate of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, is known for his economic reform efforts — and as a vocal critic of Mr. Putin's consolidation of power in Moscow.

In rejecting the ballot application, the Electoral Commission ruled that 13 percent of the signatures on Mr. Kasyanov's filing petitions were "invalid." Kremlin authorities have since threatened Mr. Kasyanov's supporters with loss of their jobs or incarceration if they protest the decision.

The Election Commission has also decided that only 70 observer-monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) would be permitted to observe the election — and that their visas would not be issued until Feb. 28, three days prior to the election. In 2004, the OSCE sent 387 observers a month in advance to cover the Russian presidential elections. But that was then — and this is now.

Moscow's blatant interference in the electoral process prompted Curtis Budden, a spokesman for the OSCE, to plaintively note that the European watchdog group might not bother to send any observers in March because, "We are not satisfied with their conditions since they don't allow meaningful observation." Prior to last December's parliamentary elections, Moscow imposed similar restrictions and the OSCE refused to send observers and subsequently criticized the elections as unfair.

In what may prove to be a final effort to capture the attention of Western policymakers, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev told reporters this week that "something is wrong with our elections, and our electoral system needs a major adjustment." And just to make sure we all would know what's "wrong," he added that the upcoming election result was "predictable from the outset" and "predetermined by the enormous role that Vladimir Putin has played." That's not all that was "predictable" or "predetermined." Though Mr. Gorbachev's remarks were broadcast around the world, they were all but ignored in European capitals and Washington. And Russian television viewers never got to see them at all.

Last December, on the eve of elections for the Duma, Mr. Putin made a televised appeal in support of his United Russia party candidates. "Please, do not think that everything is predetermined and the pace of development we have attained, the direction of our movement toward success will be maintained automatically by itself," he said. "This is a dangerous illusion."

It turns out Vladimir Putin, like the Wizard of Oz, is a master of illusion. Where is Toto when we need him?

The Kremlin Wises Up; After strong-arm tactics backfire, Moscow finds smarter ways to extend its influence abroad.

2008-01-30T11:31:00.001-08:00

Newsweek International Edition - Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova

February 4, 2008

Russians can be forgiven for a little nostalgia. Not long ago, their country commanded a worldwide empire. Yet in the past 15 years, their homeland has lost much of its geopolitical clout. No surprise, then, that the newly rich Russia should hanker to restore its muscle, and not just in its old Soviet backyard. As Tatyana Parkhalina, director of the Moscow-based Center for European Security, describes the government's current attitude, "Russia wants to send the world a message: “‘We are a superpower--we are still here!' "

Many of Russia's neighbors have already borne the brunt of Moscow's efforts to reassert itself. Last year, after a spy row with Georgia, Russia cut off all rail and air links and embargoed Georgian products. Estonia's embassy in Moscow was raided by Kremlin-backed thugs after a spat over the removal of a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn. And both Ukraine and Belarus found their oil and gas supplies suspended when they refused Russian price hikes. But all these attempts to enforce Russia's will backfired: both Georgians and Ukrainians recently re-elected their anti-Kremlin leaders. Even Belarus, once Russia's closest ally, responded to Moscow's squeeze by making overtures to Europe.

Now, it seems, the Kremlin has learned its lesson. Vladimir Putin's latest power plays demonstrate greater subtlety, and his new tactics--trading gas supplies and international diplomatic backing for loyalty--are proving more effective. Last week, for example, he traveled to Sofia to clinch a deal that will see a major new gas pipeline built through Bulgaria and ultimately on to the Balkans and Italy. Bulgaria will get stable energy supplies--but will become dependent on a Russian pipeline. Serbia quickly signed up too, in no small part because Belgrade needs Moscow's backing on Kosovo.

Indeed, Kosovo is set to become the latest showdown between Russia and the West when the breakaway Serbian republic declares its independence in the next few weeks. Washington and Berlin have promised to support it, but Putin has insisted Belgrade must approve the deal--something Serbia's current president has vowed never to do. Behind Moscow's position is an implicit threat: should the West hold firm, Russia could return the favor by ratcheting up separatist pressure in several pro-Western former Soviet states.

Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, denied last week that Moscow has any plans to recognize the breakaway Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Yet both areas are already effectively Russian protectorates, policed by Russian troops. So is Transdniestr, on the border of Moldova and Ukraine. "Abkhazia and Ossetia are like knives held to the throat of Georgia," says former Georgian parliamentarian Vakhtang Gilovani. While Moscow says it opposes the recognition of breakaway nations, it has been more than ready to use the threat of separatism as a strategic tool in the past.

Even if Moscow wins the showdown over Kosovo, it is likely to continue challenging what Putin has called the U.S.-dominated "unipolar world." U.S. backing for Kosovo's independence is proof that "Americans feel they can give or take away sovereignty depending on their own interests," says Vasily Likhachev, vice chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the upper house of Russia's Parliament. Such rancor among Kremlin leaders could lead to even more ambitious power plays. Today's "resurgent Russia is the world's foremost revisionist power," argues Prof. Robert Skidelsky of the U.K.'s University of Warwick. To balance the West, Moscow, using its "two superpower assets, nuclear weapons and energy," has already established friendly relations with a growing coalition of disgruntled states like Venezuela, Iran and Syria. What's next on the agenda? One option, according to Skidelsky, would be to foment unrest among the sizable Russian populations in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine to help bring these states back into Moscow's orbit. Another would be to build the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement, a loose alliance of Central Asian dictatorships plus Russia and China, into a powerful union.

Putin's anointed successor, Dmitry Medvedev, due to take over in five weeks' time, has so far remained quiet on questions of foreign policy. But he has said that Russia should be "strong and integrated with the rest of the world." Of course, what form that integration takes remains to be determined, and could shift dramatically if the disgruntled former superpower insists on rewriting the rules.

Russia: No Peacekeepers to Kosovo

2008-01-25T05:26:00.001-08:00

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin's newly appointed envoy to NATO emphasized Moscow's opposition to Kosovo's independence bid Thursday, but said Russia would not send peacekeepers to the Serbian province.

Former nationalist lawmaker Dmitry Rogozin also suggested ex-Soviet republics Georgia and Ukraine have no hope of joining NATO soon and called for further revision of a European arms treaty that is a sharp bone of contention between Russia and the Western alliance.

At his first news conference since his appointment, Rogozin said the terms for Kosovo's independence offered to Serbia were "shameful and defective," and compared them to Treaty of Versailles restrictions imposed on Germany after its defeat in World War I.

The independence dispute has sparked speculation that Russia could send peacekeeping troops to Kosovo in a show of force. But Rogozin said, "I see no possibility of the return of our peacekeeping contingent to Kosovo. It's not necessary to do this."

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership is likely to declare independence within weeks, a move Russia says cannot be accepted without the consent of Serbia, Russia's traditional ally. Putin said last week that Western acknowledgment would be "illegal and immoral."

"It's not the Serbs we are protecting, it's the rules of decent behavior and the architecture of international relations," Rogozin said. He likened recognition of Kosovo's independence to opening a "Pandora's box" that would trigger separatist movements in Europe.

Under an agreement with the United States, Russia sent peacekeepers to Kosovo in 1999 after the NATO bombing campaign that forced the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from the separatist region. Russia pulled its peacekeepers out in 2003.

Putin appointed Rogozin, an outspoken nationalist who until recently was a prominent lawmaker and political party leader, at a time of severely strained ties between Russia and NATO, which has made Moscow nervous by expanding into the former Warsaw Pact and the ex-Soviet Baltic nations.

Rogozin called the NATO aspirations of pro-Western governments in Georgia and Ukraine "ritual and politicized dances," saying that the ex-Soviet nations are too economically and politically weak to be accepted into the alliance.

Russia-NATO ties have been further frayed by U.S. plans to deploy missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic. Russian officials have dismissed U.S. arguments that the installations are meant to counter a potential threat from Iran, saying they believe the intent is to weaken Russia.

Another cause of tension between Russia and NATO is the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which limits the deployment of tanks, aircraft and other heavy weapons across the continent. Moscow suspended its participation in the pact last month, demanding NATO nations ratify a 1999 revision it says is fairer to Russia.

Russian officials have said they want further changes in the pact, but have offered few specifics. Rogozin said the treaty should include a "naval component" that would reflect a gap between Russian and NATO naval might.

Putin opponent to be investigated

2008-01-22T20:24:00.000-08:00

Russian prosecutors have opened a criminal case against former PM Mikhail Kasyanov - an opposition candidate in the 2 March presidential election.

They accuse his campaign of forging some of the reported two million signatures on his nomination papers.

Mr Kasyanov is challenging Mr Putin's candidate Dmitry Medvedev. Mr Putin himself is barred from the March poll.

A spokeswoman for Mr Kasyanov's campaign described the prosecutors' move as "political pressure".

'Harassment'

On Saturday he issued a statement complaining of official harassment.

Mr Kasyanov was dismissed as prime minister in 2004, and the BBC's James Rodgers, reporting from Moscow, says his political journey has turned him from a loyal member of the Putin administration to an implacable critic of the Kremlin.
The authorities refused to register his political party, which is why he was obliged to support his candidacy with a list of signatures.

But prosecutors say they suspect more than 15,000 of these are fakes.

And the electoral commission says it has found 62,000 forged signatures.

If these figures were officially confirmed, they would disqualify Mr Kasyanov from standing.

Mr Kasyanov responded by saying "the authorities are afraid of a direct political contest".

"The question today is, will the voters have a choice or not?" he told reporters.

Mr Putin is standing down as president because he is not allowed more than two consecutive terms as president.

But he is widely expected to retain his influence in the Kremlin. He says he would like to be prime minister under the presidency of his protégé Mr Medvedev, who is hot favourite to win.

Two other candidates have also registered for the poll - Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party.

A leading liberal, former chess champion Garry Kasparov, had planned to run but said he could not after his supporters were not allowed to rent halls for nomination meetings.

The final candidates list is to be announced on Sunday.

Western observers have urged the Kremlin to stand back from the presidential poll.

They accused it of interfering in parliamentary elections last year, even though Mr Putin's party was likely to have won anyway.

Russia Could Use Nuclear Weapons as Preventive Measure to Thwart Major Threat, Official Says

2008-01-19T11:00:00.001-08:00

Russia's military chief of staff said Saturday that Moscow could use nuclear weapons in preventive strikes in case of a major threat, the latest aggressive remarks from increasingly assertive Russian authorities.

"We have no plans to attack anyone, but we consider it necessary for all our partners in the world community to clearly understand ... that to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces will be used, including preventively, including with the use of nuclear weapons," Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky said.

The comments from the hawkish Baluyevsky did not appear to mark a policy shift for Russia, whose leaders have stressed the need to maintain a powerful nuclear deterrent and reserved the right to carry out preventive strikes to counter existential threats. But in most of their public remarks about preventive strikes, President Vladimir Putin and other officials have not specifically mentioned the use of nuclear weapons.

Baluyevsky's remarks came at a time of increasingly strained relations between Moscow and the West, which are at odds over a range of issues and are embroiled in persistent disputes over U.S. plans for missile defense facilities in former Soviet satellite states that have joined NATO as well as alliance members' refusal to ratify an updated European conventional arms treaty.

Like most saber-rattling by Putin and other Russian officials, the chief of staff's remarks appeared aimed at least in part at the United States, which Moscow accuses of endangering global security through aggressive actions such as the invasion of Iraq.

Putin, who has sought to boost his popularity at home and win support abroad with his vocal criticism of U.S. foreign policy, has said that Russia opposes the use of preventive military attacks but reserves the right to carry them out because other countries do so.

Baluyevsky identified no specific nations or forces that threaten Russia. According to the ITAR-Tass news agency, however, he said threats to global security include "the striving by a number of countries for hegemony on a regional and global level" — a clear reference to the United States — and terrorism.

With Russian officials jockeying for position ahead of the March 2 presidential election, Baluyevsky's remarks at a military conference in Moscow may also have been aimed in part at a domestic audience.

Putin is barred from seeking a third term but has endorsed protege Dmitry Medvedev as his favored successor and has said he will become prime minister in the event of Medvedev's election, which is virtually assured given Putin's support and the Kremlin's control over electoral politics.

Russia revives military boast of Soviet days

2008-01-18T06:18:00.000-08:00

The Washington Times - David R. Sands

Reviving yet another iconic image from Soviet days, Russia's military announced plans to stage a parade of ballistic missiles, tanks and platoons of soldiers this May through the Kremlin's Red Square.

The display of military hardware, the first of its kind since 1990, will be held May 9, the day Russians mark the victory over Germany in World War II, and could coincide with the inauguration of Dmitry Medvedev, close aide to outgoing President Vladimir Putin, as Russia's new leader.

Similar displays, typically held May 1, were a high point of the old Soviet calendar, with leaders such as Josef Stalin and other top Communist Party figures perched on the reviewing stand above Lenin's Tomb to witness the country's military prowess and send a message to the Soviet Union's Cold War adversaries.

The announcement comes at a time of rising tension between Russia and the West, on issues ranging from a planned U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe, to human rights to the future of Serbia's Kosovo province. Mr. Putin also has struggled to rebuild Russia's military forces, which deteriorated badly in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse.

"You can't teach an old imperial bear new tricks," said Ariel Cohen, a Russian specialist at the Heritage Foundation. "The current regime's craving for international prestige is as high as the insecurity of its rulers."

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband yesterday accused Moscow of following the old, hostile Soviet pattern in an escalating dispute over Russia's order that two British cultural outreach offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg be shut down. Russia claims the centers are operating illegally, but Mr. Miliband said Russian authorities were trying to intimidate the British employees.

"We saw similar actions during the Cold War, but frankly thought they had been put behind us," Mr. Miliband told the House of Commons.

According to Russia's Interfax news agency, the May 9 parade lineup will include the newest version of the Topol-M SS-27 intercontinental ballistic missile, armored personnel carriers, tanks, and 6,000 troops decked out in a newly designed uniform.

Mr. Putin has made restoring Russian national pride and reclaiming some of its lost international influence central to his presidency.

He revived a reworked version of the old Soviet anthem as Russia's new national anthem and once called the collapse of the old Soviet empire "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century."

With Mr. Putin's endorsement, Mr. Medvedev is expected to win the March 2 presidential vote handily. He already asked Mr. Putin to serve as his prime minister.

The official May Day parades were discontinued after 1990. In recent years, the day has been marked in Moscow and other cities primarily by protest marches by the declining Communist Party and by right-wing nationalist parties.

President Boris Yeltsin began staging military parades — without the weaponry — through Red Square in 1995, the first one marking the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe.

Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian military analyst for the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, said the revived display is one of a number of recent symbolic moves by the country's military. They include the resumption of strategic bomber patrol flights over the Atlantic and Pacific in August and plans for major naval exercises in the Mediterranean for the first time since 1991.

Mr. Felgenhauer noted that the traditional route for the May parade must now be altered in part because of the construction of a new shopping mall.

"One can only hope that ... no ancient building will collapse as tanks and ICBMs roll into central Moscow to serve the vanity of Russia's leaders," he said.

Post-Soviet Nationalism and the Future of Russia

2008-01-15T13:11:00.000-08:00

Comment by Andreas Umland
Special to Russia Profile

The Kremlin’s Nationalist Policies Could Have Serious Consequences

The roots of Russia’s currently rising nationalism are threefold: pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet. The idea of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” the belief that Russia has a special mission in world history, goes back several centuries. Contrary to what many in the West believe, Russian nationalism was an important element of Soviet ideology beginning in the 1930s. Like in the early 19th century, when Moscow’s so-called Slavophiles applied German nativist thought to Russian conditions, ideas of various Russian nationalist movements today are often imported from the West.

One of the factors accounting for Russia’s recent nationalist resurgence is the way of thinking learned in Soviet schools and universities – a Manichean world-view which sharply distinguishes between “us” and “them.” Although the basic definitions of “us” and “them” have changed, a number of Soviet stereotypes, about the United States, for instance, have persisted.

The major determinant in the recent rise in Russian nationalism is that the Kremlin’s political technologists have discovered it as a tool suitable for reconfiguring political discourse in general. In the Kremlin’s new political reality, President Vladimir Putin is not competing with alternative programs or parties. Putin’s opponents are not socialists, liberals or other Russian political movements. Instead, Putin is juxtaposed against Chechen terrorists, Estonian fascists, Georgian russophobes, Ukrainian neo-Nazis, American imperialists, Western conspirators, and, in general, to those non-Russians who desire to destroy, divide or at least humiliate Russia. In this atmosphere of paranoia, it is only logical that those opposing Putin are not acknowledged as constituting a legitimate (not to speak of useful) political opposition. Instead, they are represented as a “fifth column” of the West, as traitors who are, in Putin’s words, skulking around foreign embassies like jackals.

All this has made politics an easy game for the Kremlin. If the government is busy defending the country’s pride and integrity, it is impossible to observe all the niceties of freedom of the press, pluralistic public debate or fair party competition. Instead of debating what is best for the country, political discussants are searching for a plausible pretext to label any outward opposition as an enemy of Russia.

The radical, often neo-fascist wing of Russian nationalism, naturally, has been rising together with the movement as a whole. To be sure, both the Kremlin and mainstream public discourse demonstratively condemn manifest expressions of racism. Yet, the extremists - whether active in the neo-Nazi skinhead movement or publishing in high-brow conspirological journals - are part and parcel of the xenophobic hysteria that has recently consumed much of Russian society. A widespread fear among Russian and Western analysts observing the rise of Russian nationalism is now that the Kremlin could lose (or, perhaps, is already losing) control of this genie it has let out of the bottle. Russian nationalism could transform from a political tool of the Kremlin into a societal force of a proportion beyond the limits of manipulation.

A main difference between the Russian and Western forms of nationalism is that, in the contemporary West, the intellectual and political mainstream of a given country usually more or less clearly distances itself from any strong nationalist movement. While the Russian mainstream is quick to condemn racial violence, its relationship to the worldview behind such violence is, in contrast, ambivalent. Thus, authors who, in the West, would be regarded as being far beyond the pale of permissible discourse, such as the ultra-nationalist publicist Alexander Prokhanov or the ideologue of fascism Alexander Dugin are esteemed participants in political and intellectual debates on primetime TV shows. The bizarre, pseudo-scientific ideas of the late neo-racist theoretician Lev Gumilev are required reading in Russia’s secondary schools. Gumilev teaches that world history is defined by the rise and fall of ethnic groups that are biological units under the influence of cosmic emissions.

In recent years, the government has started to persecute racial crimes more actively than before. This is likely because the growing skinhead movement is damaging Russia’s international reputation. Extreme nationalism has already made the Russian Federation an unattractive study destination for dark-skinned international students who are regularly beaten and sometimes killed in Russia’s university towns. In trying to stem this tide, however, the government deals only with the symptoms of the phenomenon. To get to the root of the problem, the whole logic of current Russian politics would need to be changed – something that a well-meaning ministerial bureaucrat obviously cannot do.

If the kind of nationalist developments that have taken place in Russia over the past eight years continue into the future, we will not only witness a second Cold War, but the Russian Federation might become something like a new apartheid state in which foreigners and non-Slavic citizens are treated separately from white citizens of Russia by governmental and non-governmental institutions. Given this trend, some observers do not hesitate to speak of a “Weimar Russia,” comparing post-Soviet conditions to those in inter-war Germany. Though it is not (yet) likely that Russia will turn fascist, it seems even less probable that Russian society will become more tolerant any time soon.

The Kremlin needs to fundamentally change the way it defines Russia’s relationship to the outside world. It needs to take resolute action against the already considerable infiltration of various social institutions such as schools, universities, youth movements and the mass media with radical nationalism. If this does not happen, the Russians will be a lonely people, and Moscow will be an isolated international actor in the new century.

Andreas Umland teaches at the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kiev, edits the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society," and compiles the bi-weekly “Russian Nationalism Bulletin." This comment is a summary of an interview that he gave to the Russian-language information agency “Washington ProFile,” Washprofile.org.

Putin Names Nationalist to NATO Post

2008-01-11T05:55:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post - Peter Finn

MOSCOW, Jan. 10 -- President Vladimir Putin on Thursday appointed a prominent nationalist and political gadfly as Russia's new permanent representative to NATO, a decision that signals the Kremlin's determination to confront the military alliance across a host of divisive issues.

Dmitry Rogozin, a former lawmaker who has been in and out of favor with the Kremlin, has harshly criticized NATO and U.S. policies, including the alliance's eastward expansion and American plans to install a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

In an interview before his expected appointment, Rogozin said that he hoped to build a constructive relationship between Russia and NATO but that in the post-Cold War world, the alliance had lost its reason for being.

"NATO's problem is that it is trying to invent an enemy in order to keep the alliance together," Rogozin said last month in an interview at the Russian parliament. "That is why people who are looking for a motivation for NATO need to present Russia as an enemy. Why is NATO expanding to the east and at the same time claims that the threat is coming from the south? If the threat is coming from the south, why don't they go to the south?"

Rogozin, 44, led the nationalist Rodina party into parliament in 2003 promising to protect the interests of "ethnic Russians." However, the party, which was created with the Kremlin's backing to siphon votes from the Communist Party, was reined in when Rogozin and other leaders began to strike an increasingly independent line.

Rodina was banned from contesting local elections in Moscow when the courts found that its political advertising was racist. In 2006, Rogozin was forced out of the party leadership.

Rodina was subsequently folded into Fair Russia, another Kremlin creation, which won seats in parliament in last month's elections.

Rogozin attempted to create another party, which was denied registration, and allied himself with some openly xenophobic groups. Analysts here said that the Kremlin remained wary of his appeal and that the appointment to NATO exports a potential rival and simultaneously pokes the alliance in the eye.

"Rogozin is a capable leader, and the first reason for the appointment is to get him out of Moscow," said Alexander Golts, a journalist who specializes in defense matters. "And of course there is a message. It's clear that Russia doesn't want any positive development in relations between the West and Russia. . . . Rogozin will be very happy to annoy NATO. It will be his pleasure."

Rogozin said his rapprochement with the Kremlin came as no surprise and dismissed any suggestion that he was being exiled.

"If they had appointed me a prima ballerina in the Bolshoi Theater or a tiger tamer in the circus, I would be surprised," he said with characteristic wit. "It means that at this point, people such as me are needed. . . . NATO is not Antarctica, not even Siberia."

Rogozin has had particularly strained relations with the Baltic countries -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all NATO members -- because of his allegations of mistreatment of ethnic Russians there. In 2004, he was refused a visa to visit Latvia after he said it had become a "country of hooligans and outlaws where they get even with our veterans as well as with our children by closing Russian-language schools." He accused the country of having Nazi leadership.

Rogozin said he will oppose any further eastward expansion of NATO, particularly into Georgia, where Mikheil Saakashvili, elected this month to another term as president, is seeking membership.

"Are you seriously ready to accept a country which has not been able to solve any of its serious problems, a country which does not comply with any of NATO's standards?" Rogozin asked. "Why does NATO need to create this kind of problems for itself?"

Russia supports the separatist leaders of two breakaway parts of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Rogozin said Russia and NATO need to cooperate in such areas as the fight against terrorism, drug-trafficking and transnational crime. But relations are being spoiled by the alliance's fixation on expanding into the former Soviet Union and building up its military capability on Russia's borders, he said.

The Bush administration has said it wants to create a missile defense system in Eastern Europe to guard against a potential threat from Iran. But Rogozin said he did not believe Iran was capable of developing missiles that could target either the United States or Western Europe.

He drew parallels to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. "What if we put our missiles in Cuba and in Venezuela . . . and say we intend to take down missiles coming from Haiti that represent a threat to our territory?"

Rogozin said Russia and NATO should create a common antimissile system and jokingly warned of the consequences of failing to do so. "Let's have common ears and eyes and a common fist," he said. "What is happening now? Just the opposite. Like in the worst script for 'The Terminator.' "

"To take down one Iranian missile, the antimissile system will have to use 10 antimissiles," he continued. "We may not detect one Iranian missile, but we will detect 10 or 100 antimissiles coming from Poland and

Russia-EU seeking compromise on energy

2008-01-07T07:46:00.000-08:00

The EU-Russia energy partnership has become more of a power struggle over the past year. Although some major cross-border deals were signed in the electricity and gas sectors, politicians from both the EU and Russia were looking for compromises that neither side was prepared to make.

The European Union imports around a quarter of its gas needs from Russia, although it’s keen to start getting more from elsewhere.

Russia needs the EU too, as most of its pipelines point West, not East. In addition, Europe is buying around two thirds of what Russia produces and needs to sell on.

The relationship is inter-dependent, but it 's a delicate balance and over the last year it’s become even more fragile, with Russia criticising the European Commission for blocking Gazprom's expansion in Europe.

In autumn, the European Commission proposed legislation on unbundling the gas and electricity sectors throughout Europe to increase competition.

Speaking at a Russia-EU meeting in Brussels last October, Andris Piebalgs, EU Energy Commissioner, said, “The reason for our proposal is that we'd like a very clear separation between transport and supply.”

In Russia, this has been happening in the electricity sector, with the former monopoly Unified Energy System spinning off many of its assets into separate companies in 2007.

Germany's E.ON took control of the generating company OGK-4 and Italy's Enel bought 25% of OGK-5.

However, Gazprom has no plans to separate its extraction and distribution businesses. The Russian government says the nature of the gas market means it makes sense to keep the company together.

“The short-term market rules the situation in the electricity sector to a considerable extent, whereas it is the long-term market and long-term supply schemes that apply to the natural gas industry, with a different scheme of guaranteeing, insuring and crediting the investment,” said Viktor Khristenko, Russia’s Industry and Energy Minister.

Economic protectionism in strategic sectors - particularly energy - is on the rise across the globe and it’s got experts concerned.

“In order to surmount this slowdown in the global economy you need more open markets, including being open to foreign investment. But this is not the signal we're seeing - whether it’s from the leading economies like the EU or the U.S. or whether it’s the developing world,” said Yaroslv Lissovolik, an economist from Deutsche Bank in Russia.

Although deals between companies from both sides continue to go ahead, on a political level the EU and Russia are struggling to find legislation they can agree on.

Russia wants assurance it won't be blocked in Europe, and the EU remains committed to the International Energy Charter.

But Russia is refusing to sign up to the latest version, as it would open up its gas pipeline network to foreign competition.

Putin's New Years Address

2008-01-01T12:32:00.001-08:00

HAPPY HOLIDAYS & HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2007-12-24T11:50:00.000-08:00

I wish you all the best in the upcoming New Year. Thank's for reading.

Putin's $40 billion fortune

2007-12-20T20:07:00.000-08:00

Putin, the Kremlin power struggle and the $40bn fortune

Luke Harding in Moscow
Friday December 21, 2007

Guardian

An unprecedented battle is taking place inside the Kremlin in advance of Vladimir Putin's departure from office, the Guardian has learned, with claims that the president presides over a secret multibillion-dollar fortune.
Rival clans inside the Kremlin are embroiled in a struggle for the control of assets as Putin prepares to transfer power to his hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, in May, well-placed political observers and other sources have revealed.

At stake are billions of dollars in assets belonging to Russian state-run corporations. Additionally, details of Putin's own personal fortune, reportedly hidden in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, are being discussed for the first time.

The claims over the president's assets surfaced last month when the Russian political expert Stanislav Belkovsky gave an interview to the German newspaper Die Welt. They have since been repeated in the Washington Post and the Moscow Times, with speculation over the fortune appearing on the internet.

Citing sources inside the president's administration, Belkovsky claims that after eight years in power Putin has secretly accumulated more than $40bn (£20bn). The sum would make him Russia's - and Europe's - richest man.

In an interview with the Guardian, Belkovsky repeated his claims that Putin owns vast holdings in three Russian oil and gas companies, concealed behind a "non-transparent network of offshore trusts".

Putin "effectively" controls 37% of the shares of Surgutneftegaz, an oil exploration company and Russia's third biggest oil producer, worth $20bn, he says. He also owns 4.5% of Gazprom, and "at least 75%" of Gunvor, a mysterious Swiss-based oil trader, founded by Gennady Timchenko, a friend of the president's, Belkovsky alleges.

Asked how much Putin was worth, Belkovsky said: "At least $40bn. Maximum we cannot know. I suspect there are some businesses I know nothing about." He added: "It may be more. It may be much more.

"Putin's name doesn't appear on any shareholders' register, of course. There is a non-transparent scheme of successive ownership of offshore companies and funds. The final point is in Zug [in Switzerland] and Liechtenstein. Vladimir Putin should be the beneficiary owner."

Putin has not commented on Belkovsky's claims. The Guardian put the allegations to the Kremlin but was told Putin's chief spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was not available.

Discussion of Putin's wealth has previously been taboo. But the claims have leaked out against the backdrop of a fight inside the Kremlin between a group led by Igor Sechin, Putin's influential deputy chief of staff, and a "liberal" clan that includes Medvedev.

The Sechin group is made up of siloviki - Kremlin officials with security/military backgrounds. It is said to include Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia's KGB successor agency, his deputy Alexander Bortnikov, and Putin's aide Viktor Ivanov.

Those associated with the liberal camp include Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch and owner of Chelsea football club who is close to Putin and the Yeltsin family. Other members are Viktor Cherkesov, the head of the federal drug control service, and Alisher Usmanov, an Uzbek-born billionaire.

Insiders say the struggle has little to do with ideology. They characterise it as a war between business competitors. Putin's decision to endorse as president Medvedev - who has no links with the secret services - dealt a severe blow to the hardline Sechin clan, they add.

Some analysts have said Putin would like to retire but has been forced to carry on to shield Medvedev from siloviki plotting. Others disagree and say Putin wants to stay in power. On Monday Putin confirmed he intends next year to become Russia's prime minister.

"The siloviki are not at all nice," Yulia Latynina, a Russian political commentator said. Latynina, who hosts a political talkshow on the liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy, was one of the first journalists to draw attention last month to Putin's reported links with Gunvor.

The company is based in Zug, a picturesque Swiss canton known as a bolthole for publicity-shy international businessmen. Gunvor has neither a website nor a Moscow office - but in 2007 posted profits of $8bn on a turnover of $43bn, an astronomic figure, according to industry experts. Like Putin, its reclusive owner, Timchenko, worked in the KGB's foreign affairs directorate. He is said to have met Russia's president in the late 1980s through KGB circles.

Gunvor, which has its head office in Geneva, failed to comment.

Critics say the wave of renationalisations under Putin has transformed Putin's associates into multimillionaires. The dilemma now facing the Kremlin's elite is how to hang on to its wealth if Putin leaves power, experts say. Most of its money is located in the west, they add. The pressing problem is how to protect these funds from any future administration that may seek to reclaim them.

"There's no point in having all this money if you can't travel to the Maldives or Paris and spend it," Elena Panfilova, the director of Transparency International in Russia said.

The first hints of the intra-clan warfare gripping the Kremlin emerged last month, when the FSB arrested General Alexander Bulbov, the deputy head of the federal drug agency, and part of the liberal group. His arrest saw a surreal standoff, with his bodyguards and FSB agents pointing machine guns at each other.

Earlier this month Russia's deputy finance minister, Sergei Storchak - another "liberal" - was also arrested and charged with embezzling $43.4m. He is currently in prison. His boss, Russia's finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, part of the liberal clan, says he is innocent.

But the liberal group - one of several competing factions inside the Kremlin - has struck back. Earlier this month Oleg Shvartsman, a previously obscure businessman, gave an interview to Kommersant newspaper claiming he secretly managed the finances of a group of FSB officers. Their assets were worth £1.6bn, he revealed.

The officers were involved in "velvet reprivatisations", Shvartsman, a fund manager, said - in effect forcibly acquiring private companies at below-market value and transforming them into state-owned firms. These assets were redistributed via offshore companies, he said.

According to Panfilova, the "randomised" corruption of the 1990s has given way to the "systemic and institutionalised corruption" of the Putin era. Members of Putin's cabinet personally control the most important sectors of the economy - oil, gas and defence. Medvedev is chairman of Gazprom; Sechin runs Rosneft; other ministers are chairmen of Russian railways, Aeroflot, a nuclear fuel giant and an energy transport enterprise.

Putin has created a new, more streamlined oligarchy, his critics say. "The crown jewels of the country's wealth have ended up in the hands of Putin's inner circle," Vladimir Rzyhkov - a former independent MP - wrote in Monday's Moscow Times.

Belkovsky - who published a book about Putin's finances last year, and who is the director of the National Strategic Institute, a Moscow thinktank - claims he is confident of his assessment of Putin's hidden wealth. "It's not a secret among the elites,' he said. "But please pay attention that Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] has never sued me."

Belkovsky adds that the west has misunderstood Putin and has been distracted by his "neo-Soviet" image. Putin, Belkovsky claims, is ultimately a "classic" businessman who believes money can solve any problem, and whose psychology was shaped by his experiences working in the St Petersburg mayor's office in Russia's crime-ridden early 1990s.

"He is quite sure of this. A problem that can't be resolved with $1bn can be resolved with $10bn, and if not with $10bn then $20bn, and so on," Belkovsky said.

In an interview on Wednesday with Time magazine, which named Putin its person of the year, the president vehemently denied that those inside the Kremlin were corrupt.

Asked whether "some of the people closest to you are getting rich", Putin said: "Then you know who and how. Write to us, to the foreign ministry, if you are so confident. I presume you know the names, you know the systems and the tools.

"I can assure you and everyone who would listen to us, watch us and read us, that the reaction would be swift, immediate, [and] within the prevailing law."

ALSO IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE TIME'S "PUTIN: MAN OF THE YEAR" ARTICLE...SEE BELOW:

PUTIN: TIMES PERSON OF THE YEAR

2007-12-19T07:39:00.000-08:00

A Tsar Is Born

By Adi Ignatius

No one is born with a stare like Vladimir Putin's. The Russian President's pale blue eyes are so cool, so devoid of emotion that the stare must have begun as an affect, the gesture of someone who understood that power might be achieved by the suppression of ordinary needs, like blinking. The affect is now seamless, which makes talking to the Russian President not just exhausting but often chilling. It's a gaze that says, I'm in charge.

This may explain why there is so little visible security at Putin's dacha, Novo-Ogarevo, the grand Russian presidential retreat set inside a birch- and fir-forested compound west of Moscow. To get there from the capital requires a 25-minute drive through the soul of modern Russia, past decrepit Soviet-era apartment blocks, the mashed-up French Tudor-villa McMansions of the new oligarchs and a shopping mall that boasts not just the routine spoils of affluence like Prada and Gucci but Lamborghinis and Ferraris too.

When you arrive at the dacha's faux-neoclassical gate, you have to leave your car and hop into one of the Kremlin's vehicles that slowly wind their way through a silent forest of snow-tipped firs. Aides warn you not to stray, lest you tempt the snipers positioned in the shadows around the compound. This is where Putin, 55, works. (He lives with his wife and two twentysomething daughters in another mansion deeper in the woods.) The rooms feel vast, newly redone and mostly empty. As we prepare to enter his spacious but spartan office, out walk some of Russia's most powerful men: Putin's chief of staff, his ideologist, the speaker of parliament—all of them wearing expensive bespoke suits and carrying sleek black briefcases. Putin, who rarely meets with the foreign press, then gives us 3 1⁄2 hours of his time, first in a formal interview in his office and then upstairs over an elaborate dinner of lobster-and-shiitake-mushroom salad, "crab fingers with hot sauce" and impressive vintages of Puligny-Montrachet and a Chilean Cabernet.

Vladimir Putin gives a first impression of contained power: he is compact and moves stiffly but efficiently. He is fit, thanks to years spent honing his black-belt judo skills and, these days, early-morning swims of an hour or more. And while he is diminutive—5 ft. 6 in. (about 1.7 m) seems a reasonable guess—he projects steely confidence and strength. Putin is unmistakably Russian, with chiseled facial features and those penetrating eyes. Charm is not part of his presentation of self—he makes no effort to be ingratiating. One senses that he pays constant obeisance to a determined inner discipline. The successor to the boozy and ultimately tragic Boris Yeltsin, Putin is temperate, sipping his wine only when the protocol of toasts and greetings requires it; mostly he just twirls the Montrachet in his glass. He eats little, though he twitchily picks the crusts off the bread rolls on his plate.

Putin grudgingly reveals a few personal details between intermittent bites of food: He relaxes, he says, by listening to classical composers like Brahms, Mozart, Tchaikovsky. His favorite Beatles song is Yesterday. He has never sent an e-mail in his life. And while he grew up in an officially atheist country, he is a believer and often reads from a Bible that he keeps on his state plane. He is impatient to the point of rudeness with small talk, and he is in complete control of his own message.

He is clear about Russia's role in the world. He is passionate in his belief that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a tragedy, particularly since overnight it stranded 25 million ethnic Russians in "foreign" lands. But he says he has no intention of trying to rebuild the U.S.S.R. or re-establish military or political blocs. And he praises his predecessors Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev for destroying a system that had lost the people's support. "I'm not sure I could have had the guts to do that myself," he tells us. Putin is, above all, a pragmatist, and has cobbled together a system—not unlike China's—that embraces the free market (albeit with a heavy dose of corruption) but relies on a strong state hand to keep order.

Like President George W. Bush, he sees terrorism as one of the most profound threats of the new century, but he is wary of labeling it Islamic. "Radicals," he says, "can be found in any environment." Putin reveals that Russian intelligence recently uncovered a "specific" terrorist threat against both Russia and the U.S. and that he spoke by phone with Bush about it.

What gets Putin agitated—and he was frequently agitated during our talk—is his perception that Americans are out to interfere in Russia's affairs. He says he wants Russia and America to be partners but feels the U.S. treats Russia like the uninvited guest at a party. "We want to be a friend of America," he says. "Sometimes we get the impression that America does not need friends" but only "auxiliary subjects to command." Asked if he'd like to correct any American misconceptions about Russia, Putin leans forward and says, "I don't believe these are misconceptions. I think this is a purposeful attempt by some to create an image of Russia based on which one could influence our internal and foreign policies. This is the reason why everybody is made to believe...[Russians] are a little bit savage still or they just climbed down from the trees, you know, and probably need to have...the dirt washed out of their beards and hair." The veins on his forehead seem ready to pop.

Elected Emperor

Putin has said that next spring, at the end of his second term as President, he will assume the nominally lesser role of Prime Minister. In fact, having nominated his loyal former chief of staff (and current Deputy Prime Minister) Dmitri Medvedev to succeed him as President, Putin will surely remain the supreme leader, master of Russia's destiny, which will allow him to complete the job he started. In his eight years as President, he has guided his nation through a remarkable transformation. He has restored stability and a sense of pride among citizens who, after years of Soviet stagnation, rode the heartbreaking roller coaster of raised and dashed expectations when Gorbachev and then Yeltsin were in charge. A basket case in the 1990s, Russia's economy has grown an average of 7% a year for the past five years. The country has paid off a foreign debt that once neared $200 billion. Russia's rich have gotten richer, often obscenely so. But the poor are doing better too: workers' salaries have more than doubled since 2003. True, this is partly a result of oil at $90 a barrel, and oil is a commodity Russia has in large supply. But Putin has deftly managed the windfall and spread the wealth enough so that people feel hopeful.

Russia's revival is changing the course of the modern world. After decades of slumbering underachievement, the Bear is back. Its billionaires now play on the global stage, buying up property, sports franchises, places at élite schools. Moscow exerts international influence not just with arms but also with a new arsenal of weapons: oil, gas, timber. On global issues, it offers alternatives to America's waning influence, helping broker deals in North Korea, the Middle East, Iran. Russia just made its first shipment of nuclear fuel to Iran—a sign that Russia is taking the lead on that vexsome issue, particularly after the latest U.S. intelligence report suggested that the Bush Administration has been wrong about Iran's nuclear-weapons development. And Putin is far from done. The premiership is a perch that will allow him to become the longest-serving statesman among the great powers, long after such leaders as Bush and Tony Blair have faded from the scene.

But all this has a dark side. To achieve stability, Putin and his administration have dramatically curtailed freedoms. His government has shut down TV stations and newspapers, jailed businessmen whose wealth and influence challenged the Kremlin's hold on power, defanged opposition political parties and arrested those who confront his rule. Yet this grand bargain—of freedom for security—appeals to his Russian subjects, who had grown cynical over earlier regimes' promises of the magical fruits of Western-style democracy. Putin's popularity ratings are routinely around 70%. "He is emerging as an elected emperor, whom many people compare to Peter the Great," says Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center and a well-connected expert on contemporary Russia.

Putin's global ambitions seem straightforward. He certainly wants a seat at the table on the big international issues. But more important, he wants free rein inside Russia, without foreign interference, to run the political system as he sees fit, to use whatever force he needs to quiet seething outlying republics, to exert influence over Russia's former Soviet neighbors. What he's given up is Yeltsin's calculation that Russia's future requires broad acceptance on the West's terms. That means that on big global issues, says Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution and former point man on Russia policy for the Clinton Administration, "sometimes Russia will be helpful to Western interests, and sometimes it will be the spoiler."

Up from the Ruins

How do Russians see Putin? For generations they have defined their leaders through political jokes. It's partly a coping mechanism, partly a glimpse into the Russian soul. In the oft told anecdotes, Leonid Brezhnev was always the dolt, Gorbachev the bumbling reformer, Yeltsin the drunk. Putin, in current punch lines, is the despot. Here's an example: Stalin's ghost appears to Putin in a dream, and Putin asks for him help running the country. Stalin says, "Round up and shoot all the democrats, and then paint the inside of the Kremlin blue." "Why blue?" Putin asks. "Ha!" says Stalin. "I knew you wouldn't ask me about the first part."

Putin himself is sardonic but humorless. In our hours together, he didn't attempt a joke, and he misread several of our attempts at playfulness. As Henry Kissinger, who has met and interacted with Russian leaders since Brezhnev, puts it, "He does not rely on personal charm. It is a combination of aloofness, considerable intelligence, strategic grasp and Russian nationalism" (see Kissinger interview).

To fully understand Putin's accomplishments and his appeal, one has to step back into the tumult of the 1990s. At the end of 1991, just a few months after Yeltsin dramatically stood on a tank outside the parliament in Moscow to denounce—and deflate—a coup attempt by hard-liners, the Soviet Union simply ceased to exist. Yeltsin took the reins in Russia and, amid great hope and pledges of help from around the world, promised to launch an era of democracy and economic freedom. I arrived in Moscow a week later, beginning a three-year stint as a Russia correspondent.

I retain three indelible images from that time. The first: the legions of Ivy League—and other Western-educated "experts" who roamed the halls of the Kremlin and the government, offering advice, all ultimately ineffective, on everything from conducting free elections to using "shock therapy" to juice the economy to privatizing state-owned assets. The second: the long lines of impoverished old women standing in the Moscow cold, selling whatever they could scrounge from their homes—a silver candleholder, perhaps, or just a pair of socks. The third, more familiar image: a discouraged and embattled Yeltsin in 1993 calling in Russian-army tanks to shell his own parliament to break a deadlock with the defiant legislature when everything he was trying to do was going wrong.

Yeltsin bombed his way out of the threat of civil war and managed to hang on to power, but Russia was left hobbled. Virtually every significant asset—oil, banks, the media—ended up in the hands of a few "oligarchs" close to the President. Corruption and crime were rampant; the cities became violent. Paychecks weren't issued; pensions were ignored. Russia in 1998 defaulted on its foreign debt. The ruble and the financial markets collapsed, and Yeltsin was a spent force. "The '90s sucked," says Stephen Sestanovich, a Columbia University professor who was the State Department's special adviser for the new Independent States of the former Soviet Union under President Bill Clinton. "Putin managed to play on the resentment that Russians everywere were feeling." Indeed, by the time Putin took over in late 1999, there was nowhere to fall but up.

Path to Power

That Russia needed fixing was acknowledged by all. But how was it that Putin got the call? What was it that lifted him to power, and to the dacha in Novo-Ogarevo?

Putin's rise continues to perplex even devoted Kremlin observers. He was born into humble circumstances in St. Petersburg in 1952. His father had fought in World War II and later labored in a train-car factory. Putin's mother, a devout Orthodox Christian, had little education and took on a series of menial jobs. The family lived in a drab fifth-floor walk-up in St. Petersburg; Putin had to step over swarms of rats occupying the entranceway on his way to school. Putin's only ancestor of note was his paternal grandfather, who had served as a cook for both Lenin and Stalin, though there's no sign that this gave his family any special status or connections.

Putin describes his younger self as a poor student and a "hooligan." Small for his age, he got roughed by his contemporaries. So he took up sambo—a Soviet-era blend of judo and wrestling—and later just judo. From all accounts, he devoted himself to the martial art, attracted by both its physical demands and its contemplative philosophical core. "It's respect for your elders and opponents," he says in First Person, his question-and-answer memoir published in 2000. "It's not for weaklings."

It was the KGB that rescued Putin from obscurity—and turned the child into the man. Putin had begun to apply himself to schoolwork, and in 1975, during his senior year at Leningrad State University, he was approached by an impressive stranger who said, "I need to talk to you about your career assignment. I wouldn't like to specify exactly what it is yet." Putin, who had dreamed of becoming a spy, was intrigued. Within months he was being trained in counterintelligence. By the mid-1980s he was assigned to East Germany, where he worked undercover, pursuing intelligence on nato and German politicians. He was in Dresden, not Berlin where the action was, and probably would have been only a bit player in the Le Carré version of the cold war. But when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, so did Putin's KGB career. As angry crowds moved on the local KGB headquarters, Putin and his colleagues feverishly burned files that detailed agents' names and networks—so much paper, he recalls in the memoir, that "the furnace burst." Then he slipped into the crowd and watched as the newly liberated mobs sacked the detested building. Within two years, he left the KGB altogether.

Putin's big break was a friend's introduction to Anatoli Sobchak, the liberal mayor of St. Petersburg, who was happy to bring in an intelligent, no-nonsense outsider to help push his reformist agenda. Putin ran the office that registered businesses and promoted foreign investment. He was responsible for ensuring that President Clinton's visit to the city in 1996 went smoothly—it was the first time American officials saw Putin in action. But later that year, Sobchak, damaged by a perception of ineffectiveness and rumors of corruption, lost his re-election bid. As Putin tells us at the dacha, as a member of the losing team, he was suddenly untouchable. "Nobody would hire me there," he says.

So Putin headed to Moscow. What transpired next seemed to Kremlin watchers as unlikely as Chauncey Gardiner's unwitting rise to power in the Jerzy Kosinski novel Being There. Although Putin often says that he had no connections when he arrived in the capital in mid-1996, he had several powerful allies who landed him work in the Kremlin. He became deputy to the head of Yeltsin's general-affairs department. Within two years he was asked to head the FSB, the spy-agency successor to the disbanded KGB. Putin, in his memoir, says he received a call out of the blue asking him to head to the airport to meet Russia's Prime Minister, Sergei Kirienko. Kirienko offered congratulations. When Putin asked why, he replied, "The decree is signed. You have been appointed director of the FSB." Then, in August 1999, Putin was named Prime Minister. It's a grand title, but it doesn't come with much security: Putin was Yeltsin's fifth Prime Minister in 17 months. But Putin did far better than survive; within four months a declining Yeltsin asked Putin to take over as acting President. Putin tells us he initially declined but that Yeltsin raised it again, saying, "Don't say no." By the last day of 1999 Putin was running the country.

We ask if it had ever occurred to Putin that history would place him in such a role. "It never occurred to me," he says. "It still surprises me."

Experts generally believe that Putin won Yeltsin's endorsement because he was competent, because he wasn't part of any of the major Moscow factions competing for power and because his KGB past gave him a source of authority. But they also widely assume that he made a deal with Yeltsin and his family: in return for Yeltsin's endorsement, Putin would not pursue corruption charges against the outgoing President and his relatives, despite the rumors that surrounded the family's dealings. It's impossible to verify, but neither Yeltsin, who died this year, nor his well-connected daughter Tatyana Dyachenko was ever a subject of public investigation (though Putin quickly fired her from her position as a Kremlin image consultant). Indeed, Putin's first decree guaranteed Yeltsin and his family immunity from such probes. Putin explains things to us this way: "Mr. Yeltsin realized that I would be totally sincere and would spare no effort to fulfill my duties and would be honest and see that the interest of the country could be secured." Eight years on, one can't help seeing a parallel with the latest maneuverings in the Kremlin: just as Yeltsin rewarded Putin for his loyalty, now Putin is doing the same for his anointed successor, Medvedev. There is already a new Putin joke: Putin goes to a restaurant with Medvedev and orders a steak. The waiter asks, "And what about the vegetable?" Putin answers, "The vegetable will have steak too."

Taking Control

Putin is no vegetable. In 1999, when he assumed the role of acting President, he was a relative unknown. It was his response to a Chechen rebel incursion in the Russian republic of Dagestan in the North Caucasus that quickly set him on a path toward national glory. Alexei Gromov, who has served with Putin as press secretary since he came to power, remembers being in the room when Putin told his wife Lyudmila that he was preparing to go on a New Year's Eve trip to the war zone to meet with the troops. She was worried about his safety and went along with him. In the end, the trip may have been no more than a calculated, if risky, photo op, but it was effective. Russians met their new leader and admired his courage and energy.

The following year Putin stepped up Russia's invasion of the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Rambo-style, he promised a quick and decisive victory, reiterating his earlier pledge to defeat enemy fighters "even in the toilet." Grozny, Chechnya's capital, was all but obliterated; Russia reassumed power and installed a puppet leader. Despite heartbreaking subsequent Chechen terrorist attacks—including a 2004 assault on a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, where 339 civilians, most of them children, were killed—Russians by and large admire Putin for drawing the line in the south. Having watched Eastern Europe and the Soviet republics slip from Moscow's grip, Russians were happy to keep Chechnya—even a bombed-out Chechnya—in the fold.

To the West, meanwhile, Putin was a mystery. Russia watchers debated endlessly: Was he a pro-Western reformer? (He had worked for Sobchak.) Or a hard-liner? (He was a career KGB man.) Yet just as 9/11 helped define President Bush, so did external challenges allow Putin to grow into a leader. His first steps on the world stage were tentative. His global coming-out had occurred in Auckland at a 1999 meeting of heads of apec (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) nations. Sestanovich, who was traveling with President Clinton, remembers meeting Putin at Clinton's hotel suite. "He seemed rodentlike," says Sestanovich, "like an overgrown summer intern." But Clinton was willing to work with him. Putin tells us how, at an apec dinner at which he was feeling somewhat lost, Clinton crossed the room past other world leaders and leaned down to talk to him. "Volodya," Clinton said, using the familiar form of the name Vladimir, "I suggest we walk out together from this room." Putin rose to his feet, and the two men strolled out together. "Everyone applauded," Putin recalls. "I will remember that forever." It was Putin's only sign of softness during the 3 1⁄2 hours we spoke.

Clinton was not the only American who found something to like about Putin. Two years later, in a line that has haunted him ever since, President Bush declared that he had looked inside Putin's soul. It was their first meeting, at a summit in Slovenia, and Bush said, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy...I was able to get a sense of his soul." We ask Putin to return the favor, to describe what he has sensed of the U.S. President's soul. He declines to get personal. "I have a very good personal relationship with Mr. Bush," he says. "He is a very reliable partner, a man of honor."

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 provided Putin with another defining moment. He was one of the first world leaders to offer condolences and help to President Bush. That probably led the U.S. to back off from stridently criticizing the Chechnya adventure. But the initial shared objectives between Putin and the Bush Administration did not last. Putin strongly opposed America's invasion of Iraq and established Russia as a steady voice of opposition to Bush's adventure, demanding that decisions on Iraq be made at the U.N. (where Russia, of course, has Security Council veto power). America's occupation of Iraq has affirmed Putin's sense that he was right. "If one looks at the map of the world, it's difficult to find Iraq, and one would think it rather easy to subdue such a small country," Putin tell us. "But this undertaking is enormous. Iraq is a small but very proud nation." The debacle in Iraq plays into what is perhaps Putin's most cherished foreign-policy dictum: that nations shouldn't interfere in one another's affairs. And what that really means, of course, is that no one should interfere in Russia's affairs.

Another Putin joke: Putin and Bush are fishing on the Volga River. After half an hour Bush complains, "Vladimir, I'm getting bitten like crazy by mosquitoes, but I haven't seen a single one bothering you." Putin: "They know better than that."

A Ruthless Streak

Now that Putin has solidified his grip on power, he no longer seems overly concerned with courting Western approval. Despite a chorus of disapproving clucks from the West, Putin has shackled the press, muted the opposition, jailed tycoons who don't pledge fealty. In Russia this has been a terrible time to be a democrat, a journalist, an independent businessman. Just ask Garry Kasparov. The chess grandmaster—the highest-rated player of all time—is a far cry from stereotypically dysfunctional champions like Bobby Fischer. Kasparov has a keen political mind and a lively sense of humor. For years he has fought an increasingly lonely struggle as a democratic activist facing an uncompromising state. On Nov. 24, while holding a political rally in Moscow, he was arrested on a technicality and spent five days at Moscow's Petrovka 38 jail.

A week or so after Kasparov's release, we are sitting in Moscow's Cosmos Hotel, where he is taking part in a human-rights meeting. Assembled is a ragtag group of Russian activists, and here Kasparov is a star. (Even here his two bodyguards sandwich him whenever he walks about.) Unlike many of Putin's other critics, who seem fearful of chastising their leader openly, Kasparov isn't cowed. "Putin wants to rule like Stalin but live like Abramovich," he says, referring to Roman Abramovich, the billionaire Russian oil trader who owns London's Chelsea soccer team. "Putin's system is more like Mafia than democracy."

Putin's administration has blocked democrats like Kasparov from participating effectively in politics by making it all but impossible for them to meet the entry requirements. The President, in our discussion, routinely suggests that Kasparov is a stooge of the West because he spoke to the foreign press in English after his arrest. "If you aspire to be a leader of your own country, you must speak your own language, for God's sake," he says. Kasparov recently gave up his long-shot race for President.

Dmitri Muratov also knows the difficulties of life in the Putin era. A softspoken, heavyset man whose neatly trimmed beard is turning gray, Muratov is the editor in chief of Novaya Gazeta, a Moscow newspaper, published twice a week, with a reputation for pursuing tough investigative pieces. In the past seven years, three of his journalists have been murdered; all were looking into corruption and wrongdoing. After the third murder, Muratov decided to close the 14-year-old paper to avoid putting any other journalist at risk. But his staff talked him out of it. The paper is perpetually harassed by officials around the country, but, Muratov notes with a weary smile, "we're still alive."

The last of Muratov's journalists to die, Anna Politkovskaya, was shot in the elevator of her apartment building last year on Oct. 7. Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer turned government critic living in London, accused Putin of sanctioning the killing. Within weeks, Litvinenko himself was dead too, killed by radiation poisoning from a mysterious dose of polonium 210. (Britain wants to charge a former KGB officer, Andre Lugovoy, who has just been elected to Russia's parliament, with the killing. He denies it, and Russian law prevents the extradition of Russian citizens.)

Muratov, for his part, doesn't know who ordered his journalists' killings. He says only that he blames "corruption," which has flourished during Putin's eight years.

Although few Russians seem to think Putin himself is corrupt, it is commonly believed that he is surrounded by business and political heavies who are amassing millions in payoffs. Indeed, if anything can bring him down, it may well be graft. As long as living standards rise, people are more likely to forgive the perception that officials are getting obscenely rich by demanding illicit payoffs. But if the economy stops growing—if the price of oil falls back to earth—Putin will face a challenge, whether from the masses in the streets or from military and civilian challengers.

One insider, who asked that his identity be protected, spelled out for us just one example of how the game is played, detailing the payments a prospective regional governor has to make to political bagmen in Moscow in order to get the Kremlin's nod for the post. For wealthier regions, such an endorsement can cost as much as $20 million, money that the politicians raise quietly from corporate "sponsors" that expect special treatment in return. The amount of money flowing to kingmakers in the Kremlin, in other words, is staggering.

When we ask about the view that he is surrounded by corrupt officials, Putin turns testy: "If you are so confident, then I presume you know the names and the systems and the tools...Write to us." As for Politkovskaya, who had been investigating policy failures and human-rights abuses in Chechnya when she was killed—and who authored the 2004 book Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy—Putin says he believes she was murdered by a provocateur to cast suspicion on his administration.

For all the attention the outside world pays to such cases, formal polls make it clear that within Russia, Putin's critics are in the minority. For every journalist distressed at the rollback of freedoms, there are scores of Russians who quietly applaud Putin's efforts to reassert stability. Once a year, when Putin takes phone calls from citizens around the country, tens of thousands of people try to get through. Listening to the calls, however screened and rehearsed they may be, one is struck by the ardor of the appeals to the President to get things done and by the broad range of information at Putin's fingertips. (A woman who lives on an island off Vladivostok complained about the local ferry service. Putin told her a bridge will soon be built to link the island to the mainland.)

Certainly life in Russia today is better than it has been for years. The stores are stocked with goods. The once worthless ruble is a genuine currency, strengthening against the dollar these days. Crime persists, but the cities are not as rough as in previous years.

And then there are the President's loudest and most visible defenders: members of Nashi (Ours, in Russian), the cultish pro-Putin youth movement. In mid-December, about 20,000 of the Nashi faithful from all over Russia gathered for a rally by the Kremlin walls to celebrate the recent victory of Putin's United Russia Party in elections to the parliament. From the stage, speakers, rock singers and rappers declared their patriotism and love for the President. A banner read, into the future with putin! Someone introduced Dasha, a 10-year-old member of Mishki (Bear Cubs), the new children's division of Nashi. "I love Russia," said Dasha. "I love teddy bears. I love Putin. Together we will win!"

I went to Nashi's Moscow headquarters a few days later and met with Lyubov Serikova, a pretty 22-year-old redhead from Russia's Chuvash Republic who is a rising star in the organization. She was thrilled with the recent election and credited Nashi with helping thwart an unnamed enemy's attempt to launch an "orange revolution" in Russia. Her world seemed conspiratorial, and she echoed Putin's own statements: those who run against the President were trying to bring the country down. Putin, she said, "has made Russia a leading country in just a few years."

When we finish talking, I take a look at an official Nashi poster hanging outside her office, which excoriates U.S. policies. It's reminiscent of Soviet-era propaganda with its non sequitur acceleration of hysteria: "Tomorrow there will be war in Iran. The day after tomorrow Russia will be governed externally!" But this is no fringe group. Putin frequently visits Nashi's training camps and meets with its leaders. And from there he sometimes launches anti-Western tirades, including a recent blast at London authorities who are demanding the extradition of the suspected killer of Litvinenko.

Putin's mission is not to win over the West. It is to restore to Russians a sense of their nation's greatness, something they have not known for years. This is not idle dreaming. When historians talk about Putin's place in Russian history, they draw parallels with Stalin or the Tsars. Putin, one can't stress enough, is not a Stalin. There are no mass purges in Russia today, no broad climate of terror. But Putin is reconstituting a strong state, and anyone who stands in his way will pay for it. "Putin has returned to the mechanism of one-man rule," says Talbott of the Brookings Institution. "Yet it's a new kind of state, with elements that are contemporary and elements from the past."

And there's plenty that could go wrong. The depth of corruption, the pockets of militant unrest, the ever present vulnerability of the economy to swings in commodity prices—all this threatens to unravel the gains that have been made. But Putin has played his own hand well. As Prime Minister, he is set to see out the rest of the drama of Russia's re-emergence. And almost no one in Russia is in a position to stop him. If he succeeds, Russia will become a political competitor to the U.S. and to rising nations like China and India. It will be one of the great powers of the new world.

Back at the dacha, with snow falling lightly outside, our dinner and discussion continue. Putin has been irritable throughout, a grudging host. Suddenly, at 10 o'clock, he stands and abruptly ends the evening. "We've finished eating, there's nothing more on the table, so let's call it a day," he declares. Actually, the main course (choice of sturgeon or veal) and dessert ("bird's milk" cake)—lovingly printed in gold ink on the prepared menu cards—haven't yet been served. The Russian President's brusqueness is jarring. Have our questions angered him? Bored him? Does he have another appointment? It's not clear. "Bye bye," says Putin—in English—as he walks briskly out of the room. The work of rebuilding Russia, apparently, is never done.

Russia by the Numbers

2007-12-18T05:10:00.000-08:00

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE - STEPHEN SESTANOVICH

After meeting with leaders of the European Union recently, Vladimir Putin boasted that the surging Russian economy has overtaken that of Italy, and will overtake France in 2009. Such astonishing claims have become commonplace in statements by Russian officials, who insist Russia will become the world's fifth largest economy by 2020.

Mr. Putin's popularity at home -- and his standing abroad -- rest in large part on economic performance, so it's worth looking closely at these forecasts. They are based on a system of measurement called purchasing-power-parity (PPP), under which economists try to assign every good -- from rice to subway fares -- the same price world-wide. (The conventional method, by contrast, takes the price of goods produced locally and translate them into dollars at the current exchange rate.) PPP inflates the size of poor economies in which food and the other basics of life are cheap. In the Russian case, black bread, vodka and run-down apartments pump up GDP.

The effect can be dramatic. Measured in conventional terms, Russia, far from overtaking France in two years, is actually less than half its size -- $1.22 trillion vs. $2.52 trillion. At current growth rates, their GDPs will not be equal for 17 years. All those people who sneered about the puny Russian economy of the 1990s -- no bigger than the Netherlands, they said -- need to update their numbers, but not by much. After eight years of strong growth, the Russian economy -- in conventional terms -- is now as big as the Netherlands plus Belgium and Luxembourg.

Of course, which system of measurement is "right" depends on what you want to know. If you're interested in a country's place in the global economy, then exchange-rate measures are for you. If you want a feel for living standards, then purchasing-power-parity can, carefully used, be a helpful tool. And not just to measure food consumption: During the Cold War the U.S. government estimated the Soviet military budget by asking how much it would cost for the U.S. to produce the same fighting force. Once you assigned Red Army conscripts the same wages as American volunteers, Soviet defense spending looked a lot scarier. You might say this is what Mr. Putin is trying to do for his entire economy.

There are, however, two problems with the way Russian officials treat these GDP estimates. First, they use the PPP numbers to measure something -- their global economic standing -- that the conventional numbers measure better. You have only to play with international trade figures for a while to see how underdeveloped Russia's role in the world economy remains. How much, for example, would you expect the United States to trade with a country that might soon overtake France? The U.S. exported five times more to France in 2006 ($24.2 billion) than to Russia ($4.7 billion). This year the U.S. still exports more to the Dominican Republic than to Russia. And U.S. two-way trade with Malaysia is twice its two-way trade with Russia.

Perhaps, you say, Russian-American trade is atypical, and looking at Russia's trade with its closest neighbor -- Europe -- would paint a different picture? Yes, but not as different as you might think. As Peter Mandelson, the EU's trade commissioner, put it recently, Russia's exports to the EU are, apart from energy, "about the same as those of Morocco or Argentina" -- slightly less than 3.5% of Europe's total imports.

The EU's energy imports from Russia are, of course, about twice that level, or 7% of all imports -- a big number. But it too should be kept in perspective. Between 2000 and 2005, Russia's share in European natural gas imports dropped, from 50% to 42%. European politicians say they want to diversify their sources of supply. They're talking about something that may already be happening and can be pushed further.

There is a second problem with Russian leaders' economic claims. If we use PPP figures as intended -- to compare living standards -- we will be at least as impressed by how far Russia has to go as by how far it has already come. Just consider per-capita GDP growth in Russia, France and Italy. Under Mr. Putin, Russian per-capita income -- even in PPP terms -- has gone from somewhat less than a third of the level of France and Italy to somewhat more than a third. This increase is good news for Russian consumers, but they remain Europe's poor relations all the same.

Interestingly, Mr. Putin himself used to make this point when he first became president. To underscore how poor his country was, and how urgent it was to reform, he observed that it would take 15 years of 8% economic growth for Russia's per-capita income to equal Portugal's. This was a particularly brutal comparison, because Russians saw Portugal not as a rich European state but as a poor one. (And how humiliating to be compared to such a small country.)

These days, Mr. Putin does not use the Portugal comparison so much -- the urgency of reform is less on his mind -- so here's the update. With all its growth Russia is gaining ground, but the absolute gap between the two countries is only modestly narrower than when Mr. Putin first compared them -- just over $12,000 then, just under $11,000 now. Meanwhile, the gap between Russia and both France and Italy has widened slightly. Even if Russia keeps steaming ahead, it will probably not catch up with Portugal until 2020 -- and by some estimates, long after that.

These comparisons do not detract from the Russian economy's extraordinary growth. Its transformation is a huge opportunity for anyone who is a part of it. The reason, however, is not that Russia has catapulted itself into the ranks of the rich, but that it is still relatively poor. The low base from which it is growing means that strong increases can continue for a long time before petering out. (Just ask European machinery exporters: Their sales to Russian companies quadrupled between 2000 and 2006.) Similarly, the low living standards of the Russian people mean that the leveling off of their consumption surge is decades away. It's good politics -- and maybe even good geopolitics -- for Mr. Putin and his colleagues to claim they've come further than they have. But we'll understand today's Russia better if we don't believe them.

Mr. Sestanovich is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor of international diplomacy at Columbia University.

Three IMPORTANT Articles

2007-12-17T06:59:00.000-08:00

Putin Says He'll Be Prime Minister

MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin told a congress of Russia's dominant party Monday that he would agree to become prime minister if Dmitry Medvedev is elected as his successor - and said he would not seek to make the premiership more powerful.

Putin's statement virtually ensures that the 42-year-old Medvedev, seen as business-friendly and non-hawkish, will be elected March 2.

When Medvedev got Putin's endorsement last week, he quickly proposed that Putin become prime minister after the election. Putin had not publicly responded previously.

Putin told the United Russia congress that if he became premier, he would not seek to change the distribution of power between the president and prime minister. In Russia, the prime minister is a significantly less powerful figure than the president.

But by remaining in a prominent position, Putin could continue to exert his enormous influence and personal popularity to direct Russian affairs. He has previously said that a victory in parliamentary elections by United Russia would give him the "moral authority" to ensure that his policies are continued. The party won the Dec. 2 vote with an overwhelming majority of seats.

"If the citizens of Russia show trust in Dmitry Medvedev and elect him the new president, I would be ready to continue our joint work as prime minister, without changing the distribution of authority" between the positions, Putin said.

The Perils of Putinism

The Wall Street Journal – Editorial

Plans for a transition of power were unveiled this week in Russia. The news is that there won't be one.

Many Russians and foreign investors alike were cheered by Vladimir Putin's clearest signal yet of his intention to stay in charge beyond March's presidential elections. Shares soared on his endorsement Monday of longtime aide Dmitry Medvedev to nominally take his spot in the Kremlin. Shares jumped again a day later when the heir apparent returned the favor and pledged to name Mr. Putin as the next Prime Minister with, so everyone presumes, stronger powers than the next President.

This choreographed switcheroo is Putinism to a tee. The President and his men trample on civic freedoms and concentrate power in the name of "order" and "stability." With the economy growing on the back of oil approaching $100 a barrel, up from $15 when Mr. Putin took office in 2000, complaints are muted -- sometimes by force. But of all people, Russians ought to have learned from history that personalizing and centralizing so much authority brings trouble down the road.

An old friend of Mr. Putin's from his KGB days told us this week that the President wanted to step down to establish a precedent for future Russian leaders. But in the same breath he said that it was too dangerous for Mr. Putin to step aside -- for Russia, and for Mr. Putin himself. This is largely true, and is another feature of Putinism.

The President has made himself indispensable to keeping the peace among his boyars. The 42-year-old Mr. Medvedev holds no sway over the influential Kremlin group of siloviky -- the ex-KGB men around Mr. Putin, a KGB colonel himself -- or the security services as a whole. To them, as well presumably to Mr. Putin, Mr. Medvedev's remarkable features are his loyalty and lack of any evident charisma. An added bonus for Mr. Putin is that his choice of sidekick-in-chief was hailed abroad as a "liberal" -- which is only true compared to the other candidates floated in recent months. Mr. Medvedev's first comments Tuesday were so deferential to Mr. Putin that no doubt was left about who will stay boss.

The Putinites have their own self-serving reasons for wanting the current regime to continue. Though less brashly than the oligarchs around Boris Yeltsin, the current establishment has done very well for itself in the past eight years. Dmitry Trenin, a Russian analyst at Carnegie's Moscow Center, writes in his new book "Getting Russia Right" that the same people "rule and own" the country. Having expropriated wealth from the previous crowd, they're worried that the same could happen to them.

Mr. Putin knows that leaving power is dangerous for a Russian politician. Every single previous national leader went out in a coffin (from natural or unnatural causes) or in disgrace. So he is looking for ways to protect himself by holding on to the reins.

This transition could have helped Russian democracy to mature. The country lost an opportunity in this decade of good economic times to build a proper and predictable political system around institutions rather than men. The blame falls squarely on Mr. Putin.

If all the President cared about was restoring economic health and Russian pride, he could have claimed credit for the few good reforms his government carried out (such as the flat 13% income tax) and rode the petroleum boom to the bank. But his actions reveal a deep unease about his own appeal to Russians.

The Kremlin went out of its way to destroy the free media, freeze out national opposition parties, cancel the elections of regional governors, and shrink independent civil institutions. The courts and the Duma were neutered, and elections made irrelevant. This month's parliamentary poll was the least free since Mikhail Gorbachev introduced perestroika.

A turning point was Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" in 2004. There, an Orthodox Slav nation rose against a corrupt and authoritarian clique in spite of a booming economy; this came too close to home for the Kremlin. In its wake, Mr. Putin has turned Russia's government into the most anti-Western outside of Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela. The recent campaign saw his nationalism hit a new high pitch.

The absence of democracy is dangerous for Russia, and the world. Putinism hangs on a single man. It denies Russians a proper outlet to discuss their problems. Others will be found. Fast rising inflation has brought impromptu demonstrations. The Kremlin has opened a Pandora's box by embracing neo-fascist youth groups and ideas that will be hard to control. After the thaw under Messrs. Gorbachev and Yeltsin, Russian citizens are once again nothing compared to the power of the state, and they may one day rediscover a taste for liberty. All of this makes Russia unpredictable.

In the meantime, power struggles will continue among various factions inside the Kremlin, beyond view and unchecked by laws. Contrary to its own advertising, Putinism has sown the seeds of instability. The tapping of Mr. Medvedev and the prominent role carved for Mr. Putin in no way ends the great uncertainty about Russia's near- and long-term future. It merely accentuates it.

Medvedev's challenge

The Washington Times - Ariel Cohen

Dmitry Medvedev's endorsement as presidential candidate by four pro-Putin political parties and by Vladimir Putin himself ends months of guessing games. Mr. Medvedev's appeal to Mr. Putin to serve as prime minister not only confirms Mr. Putin will play a pivotal role in Russian politics after he steps down — it signals that Mr. Putin, not Mr. Medvedev, will remain the No. 1 politician in Russia for years to come.

If Mr. Putin agrees to serve, it is most likely he will be a super-prime minister, the "national leader" with responsibilities over foreign, security and defense policy. It is possible that after the March elections Mr. Medvedev will change the constitution or promulgate laws transferring control of some or all of these areas to Mr. Putin.

Russia fundamentally differs from Mexico, which in the last century was under the rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for 70 years. There, an outgoing president selected a successor, who then kept the former president safe. However, in Mexico, ex-presidents did not play an active role in government.

In the meeting with Mr. Putin I attended this past September in his Black Sea residence Sochi, he expressed hope he would continue to influence public affairs in Russia. "My successor will have to negotiate with me how we divide power," Mr. Putin said. Soon after, it became known Mr. Putin might become Russia's next prime minister.

Mr. Medvedev, media shy, is always keen to speak the language Westerners understand, hailing property rights, robust private sector, transparency and fighting corruption. He sounds serious and sincere.

However, as Mr. Putin will remain in the driver's seat, the chances for massive liberalization in strategic sectors, such as energy, remain meager. The Russian oligarchs, who are tight with top politicians, do not favor economic openness, which only breeds competition. Mr. Putin expressed his views in his Ph.D. dissertation, which hails the role of giant Russian state-owned natural resources companies in the global economy. Only the economic failure of such corporations could possibly force Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev to reconsider their statist approach.

Mr. Medvedev, a Putin protege, is perceived as a weak bureaucratic player and will require Prime Minister Putin's support as he consolidates power in the brutal world of Russia's political and oligarchic struggles.

In contrast to the judo black belt of Mr. Putin and other KGB veterans, Medvedev, a professor's son and a law professor himself, is soft-spoken and bookish. Having focused on domestic politics and policy, he lacks experience in foreign policy and national security and may depend on Mr. Putin's advice and support in these areas. He already has been called a "socially oriented president."

Despite his reputation as a market supporter, Mr. Medvedev is unlikely to be able to implement a classic liberal economic policy that can lead to more foreign investment and competition.

First, there are promises to keep, especially to the siloviki group — secret service generals who also control some of the choicest morsels of the economy. Kremlin Deputy Chief of Staff Igor Sechin leads this faction and also is chairman of Rosneft, the largest Russian state-owned oil company.

The siloviki have recently taken a bit of a beating. The public fight between the Federal Security Service, headed by Sechin ally Nikolay Patrushev, and the Federal Anti-narcotics Service led by Putin ally Gen. Viktor Cherkesov, spilled into public view with Gen. Cherkesov penning a controversial op-ed in Kommersant, blasting his FSB competitors.

Mr. Putin also did not appreciate a recent Kommersant interview with Oleg Shvartzman, essentially a business manager for the Sechin-affiliated business group. He disclosed too many details about the inner workings of the group's Kremlin-affiliated Russian business for anyone's comfort, including offshore tax evasion and extortion by power elites. While these publications may have weakened the siloviki, their power is still immense, and Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev must take their interests into account.

Mr. Medvedev, lacking a KGB, military or other security background, needs to keep the siloviki appeased and may have a hard time getting control of the levers of power. He will need Mr. Putin's continued support.

Even if Mr. Medvedev ever stands on his own two feet, he must remember the Russian public, from the days of the Romanovs and the Soviet Union, has always been unenthusiastic, to say the least, about weak leaders: Nicholas II, Josef Stalin's heir Georgii Malenkov, Nikita Khruschchev, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin are all viewed with disdain by the majority of Russians, while many have a positive view of "strong leaders" such as Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander II, Mr. Putin and even the monstrous Stalin and bumbling Leonid Brezhnev.

Mr. Medvedev's greatest long-term threat is his perceived weakness. Historically, each regime in Russia has been markedly different from its predecessor. Thus, Mr. Gorbachev's reign differed from Mr. Brezhnev's, Mr. Yeltsin's administration differed from Mr. Gorbachev's, and Mr. Putin's rule was unlike Mr. Yeltsin's. Messrs. Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin all "campaigned" as the antithesis of their predecessors. Mr. Medvedev, on the other hand, is Mr. Putin's "official" heir and will find it impossible to shed his boss' control and vision even if he wants to.

Nevertheless, to succeed, Mr. Medvedev will eventually need to show his mettle, both in charting his own policy and by winning in power politics.

Ariel Cohen is senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Putin "heir" on course to win Russia election: poll

2007-12-14T10:47:00.000-08:00

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The popularity of President Vladimir Putin's favored successor soared in an opinion poll released on Thursday and Putin critic Garry Kasparov pulled out of the contest.

Putin, Russia's most popular politician after nearly eight years in charge, this week anointed First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as his preferred choice in the March 2 election.

Medvedev, a former law professor, was already pulling away from other possible contenders, independent pollsters Levada said of a survey mainly carried out before Putin's endorsement.

It showed 35 percent of people would vote for him, putting him 14 percentage points ahead of his nearest rival.

Analysts said they were watching to see whether Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, the strongest opposition challenger, would risk running. Former world chess champion Kasparov said he would not take part.

"There is no choice in Russia," Kasparov told reporters in the town of Serpukhov, some 100 km (60 miles) south of Moscow, where he attended the funeral of an opposition activist.

"March 2 will just be the calendar date when the victor of the Kremlin power struggle is declared," Kasparov said. "We understand that a decision has been made not to allow my registration even at this preliminary stage."

Widely regarded in the West as a symbol of opposition to Putin, Kasparov's support at home is slim and pollsters say he had no chance of winning.

Kasparov said official obstruction meant he had not even been able to rent a hall to hold a meeting of supporters, a formality needed to launch a presidential bid.

U.S. CONCERN

Medvedev, 42 and board chairman at gas giant Gazprom, has offered Putin the post of prime minister if he is elected president, opening the way for the former KGB spy to preserve influence after he steps down in May.

David Kramer, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, said Putin's endorsement was likely to tip the balance towards Medvedev.

"I think there is some concern that the Kremlin-favored or even Putin-favored candidate will receive the benefit of media attention and other resources devoted to his candidacy the expense of others," Kramer told reporters in Berlin.

Putin's supporters credit him with cementing political stability and presiding over the longest Russian boom for a generation. Opponents say he has crushed dissent and crafted a political system dangerously dependent on one man.

The Levada poll, carried out from December 7 to 10, showed the second strongest potential candidate was First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, with 21 percent support, followed by Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov on 17 percent.

Both Zubkov and Ivanov have said they support Medvedev. Forty percent of those polled had said they would vote for whomever Putin anointed, said Denis Volkov of the Levada Centre.

Communist Party leader Zyuganov was the most popular possible presidential candidate from the opposition, the poll showed, with 15 percent support.

His party will meet this weekend to decide whether he will run in the presidential election. Zyuganov sat out the last vote, in 2004, allowing Putin to win almost unchallenged.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist LDPR which casts itself as an opposition party but broadly backs Putin, had 11 percent support in the Levada opinion poll. Zhirinovsky announced on Thursday that he would run.

Kasparov Checkmated

2007-12-12T17:38:00.000-08:00

(Forbes)LONDON - Russian chess legend Gary Kasparov has finally run out of moves against the grand master of Russian politics, President Vladimir Putin.

"My electoral campaign finishes tomorrow," Kasparov told journalists in Moscow on Wednesday, abandoning his hopes of challenging Putin's nominee Dmitry Medvedev, during the presidential elections due to take place in March. Kasparov blamed problems organizing an official meeting of supporters to back him as candidate, as required under Russian electoral law.

While Kasparov's move might grab headlines in the West, it is likely to cause no more than a flicker in Russia, where his defeat, like that of all other opposition parties, is a virtual given. Medvedev, Putin's successer as presidential candidate for the United Russia party is expected to sweep to victory in March, a win made all the more certain by last week's parliamentary elections. (See: "Russia's Kremlin Sustains Control")

While candidates from opposition parties do exist, they are expected to get no more than 15.0% of the vote, and Kasparov himself unlikely to have got more than 2.0%, Eurasia Group analyst Denis Maslov told Forbes.com.

Kasparov and other critics of the Putin regime have accused the Kremlin of crushing democratic opposition by dominating the media, instituting electoral laws that penalize small parties, and using heavy handed tactics to break up opposition rallies and demonstrations. (See: "Garry Kasparov's Next Move")

These factors have certainly played a role, but even without them observers believe that the astounding popularity of Putin and his policies would have given the opposition, which is heavily divided, little hope.

The huge strides made by Russia, both economically and on the international stage, during the past few years have made Putin virtually a cult figure. After the dark years that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the stable environment offered to businesses and the massive boost to the economy from oil and gas reserves, provided a deflated and despondent public with a much needed lift.

Though Medvedev's position as Chairman of Gazprom, may provoke some concern from European leaders already anxious about the power of the energy goliath, within Russia he represents a very credible and successor to Putin. At 42, he is relatively young, while his quiet political style is likely to help smooth the country's choppy relationship with the West. (See: "Mr. Gazprom For Russia")

According to Maslov, though, outside of Russia Kasparov has come to symbolize democratic opposition to Putin, within the country he is seen as just one of many.

"Kasparov may be a media darling in the West, but in Russia he is not seen as a particularly charismatic character," said Maslov. In particular, Kasparov's promises to change the system have not gone down well in a country that craves stability. "People in Russia don’t want any more revolutionary upheavals. They are quite pleased with how things are going."

Medvedev says Putin should be PM

2007-12-11T18:58:00.000-08:00

(BBC) Russian President Vladimir Putin should become prime minister after stepping down next year, his chosen successor Dmitry Medvedev says.

Mr Putin named Mr Medvedev on Monday as his favourite for the presidency. Mr Putin's own popularity is likely to ensure he is elected, analysts say.

Mr Putin steps down in March but is expected to retain political influence.

Mr Medvedev was Mr Putin's chief of staff and is currently a first deputy PM and chairman of gas giant Gazprom.

"I appeal to [President Putin] with a request to give his agreement in principle to head the Russian government after the election of the new president," Mr Medvedev said on Russian television on Tuesday.

"It's one thing to elect a president - it's no less important to maintain the efficiency of the team," he said.

Uncharted territory

Mr Putin is constitutionally obliged to quit after his second presidential term ends next year.

It is not clear how the president will respond to Mr Medvedev's offer. Mr Putin's spokesman says only that he will continue to work as president until the day his term runs out.

In post-Soviet Russia, the president has always been more powerful than the prime minister.

If Mr Putin were to become prime minister, that could change, according to the BBC's Moscow correspondent, James Rodgers.

But, he says, this has never been tried before and it raises the risk of a conflict unless there is a clear understanding of how powers will be divided between the two posts.

Hot favourite

Mr Medvedev said on Tuesday that he wanted the benefits of economic growth to reach all sections of Russian society.

"Now we need to convert all the successes achieved in the past eight years into real programmes," he said.

If elected president, he said, he would pay the greatest attention to social issues.

Mr Medvedev was addressing leaders of the four pro-Kremlin parties backing him, including United Russia, the party which won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections earlier this month.

The 42-year-old former lawyer managed Mr Putin's election campaign in 2000.

As first deputy prime minister he has overseen national programmes in the areas of health, housing and education.

Russia has made huge economic gains as a result of soaring international oil prices.

The government has been facing demands to channel energy revenues into pensions, benefits and parts of the country's infrastructure that have been decaying since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Pressure for continuity

Mr Putin has made it clear he will retain a significant national leadership role after he leaves office at the end of his second term.

He has said he expects Mr Medvedev to provide continuity.

"We have the chance to form a stable government after the elections in March 2008. And not just a stable government, but one that will carry out the course that has brought results for all of the past eight years," Mr Putin said on Monday.

United Russia leader Boris Gryzlov highlighted Mr Medvedev's role in managing national projects aimed at raising Russian living standards.

"Dmitry Anatolyevich [Medvedev] oversees national projects," he said.

"He oversees the demographic programme and we believe that it is precisely the issues to do with raising standards of living that are the most important issues for the forthcoming four-year period."

Putin backs First Deputy PM Medvedev for president

2007-12-10T12:23:00.000-08:00

MOSCOW, December 10 (RIA Novosti) - First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's candidature for Russian president has been backed by Vladimir Putin, the parliamentary speaker said on Monday.

Following months of speculation over who could assume the presidency next year, Putin said on national television: "I have known Dmitry Medvedev well for over 17 years, and I completely and fully support his candidature."

Speaker Boris Gryzlov, who also heads the ruling United Russia party, said four pro-Kremlin parties had put forward Medvedev's nomination.

"We would like to nominate the candidate that we all support. This is First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev," Gryzlov told a meeting between the president and the leaders of United Russia, A Just Russia, the Agrarian Party and Civil Force.

Medvedev, 42, chairs the board of Russia's state-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom and is overseeing an ambitious multi-billion-dollar "national project" to improve living standards in the country. In view of Putin's high popularity rating and full support of most of the legislature, his backing of the nomination is likely to guarantee Medvedev the presidency.

Putin, who is forbidden from seeking a third consecutive term as president next year, said the backing of four parties for a single candidate at the March 2 election meant there was a realistic chance of building a stable government in Russia.

Medvedev will be formally nominated as presidential candidate at a United Russia congress on December 17, Gryzlov said.

Medvedev, a trained lawyer, worked under Putin in the early 1990s in the mayor's office of St. Petersburg, the president's home town. He is widely seen as a pro-business moderate, in contrast to another first deputy premier who had been widely tipped for the presidency, ex-defense minister Sergei Ivanov, 54. Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, 66, was also seen as a possible contender.
"This is positive news for the market as the most liberal of the three possible presidential candidates was approved," Yaroslav Lisovolik, a senior Deutsche Bank economics analyst, said. "The liberal aspect of Putin's economic policy can be preserved if Medvedev becomes president."

He also said that under Medvedev Russia would pursue a policy of integration into the global economy.

Echoing the statement, an economist at Russian brokerage Troika Dialog said the news would encourage investment in the country. Anton Struchevsky said Medvedev was seen as a liberal, unlike Ivanov, an ex-KGB 'silovik' treated with apprehension by Western countries.

However an analyst with Trust investment bank, Yevgeny Nadorshin, said Medvedev's appointment would not influence the investment climate in Russia, and that there was in fact little difference between the candidates.

Russia's stock market welcomed the news. The Russian Trading System (RTS) index rallied 1.14% to a new high of 2311.81 as of 2:30 p.m. Moscow time. The Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX) gained 1.19% to 1936.14.

Medvedev moved to Moscow in 1999, when he was appointed acting deputy chief of President Putin's staff. He also headed the president's campaign headquarters in the run-up to the 2000 election. In 2003, he became chief of the presidential administration and retained the post until November 2005, when he was appointed first deputy prime minister.

Putin, while saying he will not violate the Constitution and remain in the Kremlin for a third term, has pledged to retain influence in Russian politics. Various theories have been circulated in domestic and international media as to what position the popular president could opt for after the polls next year.

Putin's party to name 'successor'

2007-12-07T08:33:00.001-08:00

President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, which won a huge majority in recent parliamentary elections, is to choose its presidential candidate.
The vote is expected to take place at a special party congress on 17 December.

The party's candidate is the strong favourite to succeed President Putin, who is due to step down in March.

There has been speculation that either Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov or the First Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, will be nominated.

Mr Putin has made it clear he intends to continue to play a national leadership role after he leaves the presidency.

The leader of the United Russia party, Boris Gryzlov, said that he would be nominated for the post of speaker of parliament.

His announcement ends speculation that Mr Putin would himself take the post.

Russia sends aircraft carrier group to Mediterranean to try to restore naval presence

2007-12-06T06:49:00.000-08:00

The Associated Press

Russia dispatched an 11-ship aircraft carrier group to the Mediterranean Sea, the defense minister said Wednesday part of what he said was an effort to resume regular Russian naval patrols on the world's oceans.

The announcement by Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov is the latest move by Russia to expand its military presence internationally and flex growing economic and military strength.

Speaking at a Kremlin meeting with President Vladimir Putin, Serdyukov said an aircraft carrier, two anti-submarine ships, a guided missile cruiser along with refueling ships from Russia's Northern and Black Sea fleets and 47 aircraft would be part of the group in the Mediterranean.

He said the group would conduct three tactical exercises with real and simulated launches of sea- and air-based missiles and make nearly a dozen port calls.

"The expedition is aimed at ensuring a naval presence and establishing conditions for secure Russian navigation," Serdyukov said in televised comments.

Earlier this year, naval chief Adm. Vladimir Masorin called for restoring a permanent Russian presence in the Mediterranean, saying it was a strategically important zone for the Black Sea Fleet.

Soviet navy ships used to be based at Syria's Mediterranean port of Tartus, and Russia still maintains a technical base there.

Analysts have said it made no sense militarily for Russia to have a presence in the Mediterranean. Others have suggested that Russia might seek to relocate part of its Black Sea Fleet there if it fails to get an extension of its agreement with Ukraine on leasing the Sevastopol port when it expires in 2017.

The naval expedition is the latest effort by Putin to breathe new life into Russian armed forces, bolstered by the torrent of oil revenues pouring into government coffers.

Earlier this year, he ordered the military to resume regular long-range flights of strategic bombers. In recent years, Russia's bombers have resumed flights to areas off Norway and Iceland, as well as Russia's northeast corner, across the Bering Strait from Alaska several years ago.

Still, it was unclear how much of a presence the Russian ships would have, either in the Mediterranean or elsewhere. Like other branches of military, the navy, particularly its surface fleet, suffered in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, as a lack of funding resulted in ships and submarines rusting away in docks and berths.

Last month, a group of independent military experts said Putin's government had failed to reverse the post-Soviet decline of Russia's armed forces despite repeated pledges, saying the military continues to suffer from rampant corruption, inefficiency and poor morale. The Kremlin also has failed to deliver on promises to modernize arsenals, they said.

Experts also have said increasing military budgets under Putin have actually bought fewer weapons than under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, blaming graft as the root of the problem.

Putin’s easy route to a third term

2007-12-05T17:13:00.000-08:00

There is a very easy way for Mr Putin to stay on for a third term: amend the constitution. Article 81, which limits presidents to two consecutive terms, can be amended by a two-thirds majority of the Duma and a two-thirds majority of the Federation Council. In Sunday’s election, United Russia, with Mr Putin’s name at the top of its list, received 64 per cent of the vote and 70 per cent of the seats. Another 18 per cent of the seats will go to the Liberal Democratic party and Fair Russia, both of which support Mr Putin. In the council, composed of representatives of the governments of the territorial units of the country, support for such an amendment would, if anything, be even more overwhelming. One of the most vocal supporters of the idea of a third term for Mr Putin has been Sergei Mironov, the chairman of the council.

An amendment of article 81 would take effect as soon as both houses have approved it. Since the presidential election will take place three months after Sunday’s election, there will be plenty of time for the newly elected Duma and the council to amend the constitution.

Mr Putin does not, of course, want to appear to be scheming to stay on as president and has never called for a constitutional amendment. But he has never said he would not run if the Duma and council amended the constitution, and there were intriguing signs during the election campaign that this may happen. Rallies and demonstrations took place throughout the country calling for him to remain in office. They would not have happened without the approval of local officials, and evidence has surfaced that local officials had a hand in organising them. Two weeks ago in Krasnoyarsk, Mr Putin said if United Russia won with an overwhelming majority he would have a “moral right” to ask the Duma and government to continue current policy. And, he said: “I’m refraining so far from saying in what form I will do that. There are various options and, if it happens [an overwhelming majority] I will have that opportunity.” United Russia won an overwhelming majority and Mr Putin now has that opportunity.

David R. Cameron,
Professor of Political Science,
Yale University,
New Haven, CT 06520, US

Russians accept election result without protest

2007-12-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Foreign observers and opposition parties say Russia's parliamentary election was unfair but nobody expects big protests in a country riding the eighth year of an oil boom where political apathy is becoming a way of life.

President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party won a big majority in Sunday's election after a one-sided campaign in which state media and government resources relentlessly promoted the Kremlin line, monitors and independent analysts say.

Europe and the United States demanded an investigation into reports of election irregularities and opposition leaders decried "the dirtiest elections in Russian history".

But few Russians seemed bothered.

"The public is cynical and realizes that dubious tricks are being played but they don't care very much," said Masha Lipman, editor of the Pro et Contra Journal at the Moscow Carnegie Centre think-tank. "Life is better for them right now.

Former chess champion and opposition leader Garry Kasparov denounced Sunday's election while voting was still going on. He appealed for supporters to lay flowers at the Central Electoral Commission on Monday marking the "funeral of Russian democracy".

A few dozen people turned up and the protest fizzled out.

By contrast, around 10,000 youths belonging to Nashi, a pro-Putin youth movement, rallied the same day at the Kremlin walls wearing scarves, jackets and pins bearing Putin's face to celebrate their leader's victory.

Russia's history is dominated by autocratic rulers, from the tsars to the Soviet Communist leaders ushered in by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Ordinary Russians often say they prefer tough rulers who brook little or no dissent.

"We can complain about the unfairness of the election but something we can't do is provide an opposition movement -- the Russian people have to do that themselves," one senior European diplomat said.

The liberal politicians who ruled Russia in the 1990s remain discredited, following the 1998 economic collapse in which many Russians lost their savings. The opposition has been marginalized and faces frequent police harassment at rallies.

Putin's supporters are set to win 393 of the 450 seats in the lower house of parliament. Russia's two liberal, pro-Western parties scored far below the 7 percent minimum needed to get in.

The Kremlin said the low vote was the liberal parties' own fault.

"Unfortunately there was a further collapse of the right," said a presidential spokesman. "It's a real signal they have to do something to get rid of their marginality."

"DIRTIEST ELECTIONS IN RUSSIA'S HISTORY"

Opposition politicians talked tough about unfairness on election day. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov threatened legal challenges. Other parties were equally scathing.

But the Communists have long seemed content to stay in opposition and the Central Electoral Commission, headed by a Putin ally, quickly declared it had found no major problems.

The complaints about unfairness and cheating led some observers to recall events in neighboring Ukraine, where presidential elections were deemed unfair by voters in 2004.

Ukraine's controversial vote led to street protests which finally led to a re-run of the election and handed victory to the opposition.

Nobody expects a similar outcome in Russia.

"Even at that time (2004) it was totally obvious to any objective observer that there would never be anything like an Orange Revolution in Russia," Lipman said.

"If the stakes are as high as they are for the Kremlin elite to preserve the status quo, you want double, triple, quadruple protection."

Opinion pollsters say many Russians didn't expect a clean election in the first place.

"There won't be any protests," said Natalya Zorkaya, a researcher at the Levada Centre, a polling group. "Those who didn't vote for United Russia anticipated that the election would be dirty and those who did are happy with the outcome."

Putin's Party Sweeps Russian Vote (63%)

2007-12-02T16:18:00.000-08:00

Putin Gets Mandate as His Party Sweeps Russian Vote

By Henry Meyer and Sebastian Alison

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- President Vladimir Putin's party swept parliamentary elections, partial results showed, giving him the mandate he sought to keep guiding Russia after he leaves office next year.

The Central Election Commission said, with 38 percent of yesterday's vote counted, United Russia had 63.1 percent and two other pro-Kremlin parties a combined 17 percent -- handing them more than four-fifths of the seats in the State Duma. Turnout was above 60 percent, higher than in 2003. Opposition parties complained of unprecedented vote-rigging.

Putin, 55, who cannot run in March 2 presidential elections because of a ban on three consecutive terms, had called for Russians to vote in large numbers for his party, saying this would give him the ``moral right'' to retain a leading role. He has yet to reveal what that will be.

``Sixty-sixty does achieve the objective: to substantiate Putin's popularity and position,'' Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib Financial Corp. in Moscow, said in a telephone interview. ``He can now pretty much choose what position he wants going forward.''

Investors have welcomed the prospect of a continuation of the president's policies. Russia's economy has expanded nearly 7 percent a year since Putin was first elected in 2000, fueled by high energy prices, and the value of Russian stocks has grown by $1 trillion.

`Continue to Dominate'

``Although Mr. Putin is leaving office, his influence and approach and a team of like-minded colleagues will continue to dominate Russia's political structures and manage its macroeconomy regardless of who is elected president next year,'' Moody's Investors Service Vice President Jonathan Schiffer said in an e-mailed comment.

The partial results gave the opposition Communist Party second place with 11.5 percent. Two other parties that support Putin also were on course to clear the 7 percent barrier required to enter the lower house of parliament. The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia had 9.4 percent and Fair Russia 7.6 percent. Two small pro-democracy parties failed to win seats. The vote should be mostly counted by 10 a.m. Moscow time.

United Russia's chairman, Boris Gryzlov, said the elections ``were effectively a referendum'' on Putin and that the president ``won in the first round.''

``Putin will consider this result a victory,'' Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a political analyst at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, said in a telephone interview. ``I am sure he will manage to maintain his power.''

Duma Seats

United Russia and its allies would have almost 400 of the 450 Duma seats, based on the early results, with the Communists holding the remainder.

Opposition parties alleged that the state used its resources to rig the result in favor of United Russia. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov denounced unparalleled ``administrative pressure,'' describing the elections as ``not democratic, not fair and not free.'' His party plans to contest the results in the Supreme Court.

According to Russian nongovernmental organization Golos, which receives U.S. government funding, the authorities put pressure on state employees to obtain absentee ballots, so that they could vote at work under official supervision, ``to artificially boost turnout'' and United Russia's share of the vote.

Election Observers

The main election-monitoring arm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the continent's leading rights and democracy watchdog, abandoned plans to observe the vote, citing ``unprecedented restrictions.'' Only a 70-strong European parliamentary observer mission monitored the election. It will announce its findings later today.

Putin, who stepped up anti-Western rhetoric during the campaign, warning of the danger of ``jackals'' backed by foreign powers taking control, accused the U.S. of advising the international observers to stay away.

The Bush administration called on Russian authorities to investigate reports of election-day irregularities.

``We expressed our concern regarding the use of state administrative resources in support of United Russia, the bias of the state-owned or influenced media in favor of United Russia, intimidation of political opposition, and the lack of equal opportunity encountered by opposition candidates and parties,'' White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in an e-mailed statement. ``We also regret that limitations Russia imposed on election monitors prevented OSCE's ODIHR from fielding an election monitoring mission.''

OSCE Absence

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio broadcast yesterday that she regretted the absence of OSCE observers and had told Putin of the importance of a multiparty system.

The Russian leader, who headed United Russia's list of candidates for the Duma, hasn't endorsed any candidate to replace him as president. Pollsters say that any politician who gets Putin's blessing will win.

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, a co-chairman of United Russia, said the party could announce its presidential candidate as early as Dec. 17, the Interfax news service reported.

Analysts say that among potential successors to Putin are First Deputy Prime Ministers Sergei Ivanov, 54, and Dmitry Medvedev, 41, and Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, 66. Candidates must come forward by Dec. 23.

Russia prepares to vote with all eyes on Putin

2007-12-01T07:58:00.001-08:00

MOSCOW (AFP) — Russians on Saturday prepared to vote in parliamentary elections expected to hand a sweeping victory to President Vladimir Putin's party and consolidate the Kremlin's power three months before presidential polls.

The opposition has denounced the elections as a "farce" and warned that Putin was leading the country to Soviet-style one-party rule during a campaign that has been overwhelmingly dominated by his United Russia party.

Voting kicks off at 2000 GMT Saturday in the Russian Far East region of Kamchatka, some 6,000 kilometres (3,700 miles) east of Moscow and polls are set to open nine hours later in the Russian capital.

Putin is standing as United Russia's lead candidate in the elections and has said that a convincing victory would give him a mandate to continue playing a role in politics after he steps down in March of next year.

The ex-KGB officer in power since 2000 has cast the elections as a referendum on his rule, saying that a vote for United Russia would safeguard the country's oil-driven economic boom and stability.

"The result of the parliamentary elections will, without a doubt, set the tone for the elections for a new president," Putin said in a televised address on Thursday that was aired again on Friday.

Russian authorities and businesses meanwhile mounted a massive effort to maximise the turnout, including through SMS messages from Russia's biggest operators encouraging mobile phone subscribers to vote.

Putin and his Kremlin allies are hoping that a strong victory coupled with a high turnout at the polls will give them a free hand to lay the groundwork for the presidential vote set for March 2.

In his final pitch to voters, Putin urged them to turn out at the polls, warning that a vote for his opponents could return the country to the "humiliation, dependency and disintegration" of the early post-Soviet years.

The campaign has also seen Putin ramp up his anti-Western rhetoric, likening his opponents to Western-funded "jackals" and warning that while Russia was committed to democratic development, it would not allow "this process to be corrected from the outside."

A campaign blackout went into effect as required by law, but television news showed footage of Putin, a judo black-belt, attending a martial arts competition in Moscow late Friday, nodding approvingly as he watched sumo wrestlers and kickboxers square off in the rings.

Giant United Russia posters remained prominently displayed in Moscow while those of the 10 other parties fielding candidates to the 450-seat State Duma were hard to spot.

The opposition has accused the Kremlin of suppressing debate during the campaign by dominating television coverage on state media, confiscating their election leaflets and arresting members.

Former chess champion turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov has dismissed the elections as a "farce" and warned that Putin was leading the country toward dictatorship.

After spending five days behind bars this week for taking part in an unauthorised protest against Putin, Kasparov accused the 55-year-old president of resorting to repression to cement his party's dominance.

"Fear is the only chance this regime has to survive," he said.

Election watchdog groups have voiced concern over allegations that voters have come under pressure from authorities to turn out and vote, with many told to cast ballots at their workplaces, under the watchful eye of their bosses.

But Saint-Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko, a Putin ally whose name has been floated as a possible successor, defended the elections as democratic and said: "I have no worries about tomorrow's victory", Interfax reported.

In the final days of campaigning, Putin appeared to confirm that he would not stand in the March vote, but whether he plans to anoint a successor, perhaps temporarily while he prepares a return to the presidency, remains unclear.

The campaign for the presidency kicked off on Wednesday with no frontrunner in sight and the clock is ticking for Putin to tip his hand before a December 23 deadline for parties to nominate their candidates for the top post.

Putin is barred by the constitution from seeking a third term.

The United States on Friday said it would be closely watching as some 109 million registered voters cast ballots in the Russia's fifth election since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

"We are concerned that people would not be able to have the free and fair elections that they deserve," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Some 450,000 police officers will be on duty across the country on Sunday to ensure order as voters flock to the 95,000 polling stations set up across Russia's 11 time zones.

The last polling stations are due to close at 1800 GMT in Kaliningrad, a Russian region sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.

Kasparov: Russian Election a Farce

2007-11-30T13:58:00.000-08:00

Kasparov: Russian Election a Farce

By STEVE GUTTERMAN
The Associated Press
Friday, November 30, 2007

MOSCOW -- The former world chess champion is awaiting his opponent's next move.

Garry Kasparov, released from jail after serving a five-day sentence for leading a protest against Vladimir Putin, acknowledged Friday he holds the weaker position in his confrontation with the Russian president.

But Kasparov predicted the upcoming election season, which begins with Sunday's parliamentary vote, will force the secretive Putin to reveal his strategy in the nail-biting political game gripping the country as Putin's time in the Kremlin runs out.

As the campaign for the March 2 presidential vote gathers pace, Kasparov said, the Kremlin's beleaguered, fractious opponents can regroup for a new push aimed at "dismantling Putin's regime."

He hopes their ranks will be strengthened following Sunday's vote, which will also push dissenting voices further to the margins.

With Putin leading the ticket of the main pro-Kremlin party, United Russia, government authorities have made an all-out effort to secure an overwhelming victory. Watchdog groups alleged this week that government officials across Russia have been using their powers to intimidate opposition campaign workers and candidates.

Putin has cast the election as a crucial vote for continuity _ and suggested that a convincing United Russia win would give him a popular mandate to retain influence after the presidential vote, in which he is barred from seeking a third term.

Kasparov labeled Sunday's vote a farce that will push the country toward dictatorship.

Maneuvering to maintain control, Putin has sprung a series of surprises on Russians, but kept them guessing about his specific plans. Unlike in chess, Kasparov said, "the only rule in our game with the Kremlin is that the Kremlin changes the rules whenever it sees fit."

"Materially, we are now the weaker side, we cannot dictate our game," the former world chess champion told a news conference. "And the rule I've learned all my life is that if your position is weaker, you must await the active moves of your opponent."

That will happen, he said, by the Dec. 23 deadline for nominating candidates for the presidential vote. Putin is expected to name a favored successor, who would almost certainly win; Kasparov said he did not rule out that Putin would seek to remain president.

"Now our opponent must make a move that will draw him into a game with rules ... and then we will be able to respond," he said. "Whatever happens, I believe that at the beginning of next year, a real opposition to the regime will begin to form in Russia."

Sunday's vote, he said, will bring "total domination by United Russia."

"Russia today does not correspond to even the most primitive idea of a democratic state," he said. It is "an authoritarian state with a very serious tendency toward single-party dictatorship."

Aside from United Russia, only one party _ the Communists _ appears certain to clear the 7 percent threshold needed to win seats in the 450-member State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

Kasparov, who has struggled to attract more than a few thousand people to protests he has led over the past year, said more people could join opposition groups after the vote.

Opinion polls put Putin's approval rating around 80 percent and indicate United Russia could win that proportion of parliament seats. But Kasparov, citing rising prices and the gap between rich and poor, says there is much more discontent.

He asserted that the heavy-handed campaign being carried out by United Russia is motivated by Putin's awareness of that discontent.

"He knows that the real situation in Russia is far, far apart from the virtual reality he presents on television," he said.

Kasparov has sought to harness opposition through a series of street protests called Dissenters' Marches, several of which have been violently broken up by police. The Other Russia has voted to nominate him as its presidential candidate.

He has been detained several times, and last Saturday he was sentenced to five days in jail, convicted of leading an illegal march, chanting anti-Putin slogans and resisting arrest during a Moscow protest.

Kasparov said he and others jailed were denied access to lawyers and visitors.

"The authorities ... are ignoring the constitutional minimum that was followed even in the Soviet Union," he said.

Moscow: Oil Town

2007-11-29T05:09:00.001-08:00

Moscow: Oil Town
Petrodollars are fueling an unprecedented—but precarious—prosperity in Russia’s capital.

Guy Sorman
Autumn 2007

Those who knew the Soviet Union before 1991 agree that Moscow is a happier place today. In the old days, the city wore a dark, brooding look. People were poor and afraid; the ruble was worthless, though there was nothing to buy anyway. Imperial Moscow boasted two, perhaps three, restaurants, offering meager fare. The only ones to ply a trade were watchmakers, who made their living repairing old watches—a telling sign of the low level of consumption and innovation. Soviet Russia manufactured weapons, and little else.

In just 15 years, Moscow has transformed completely. Restaurants, bars, and hotels overflow with people, day and night. Gilded youth and nouveaux riches flaunt their wealth and expensive cars. French and Italian luxury goods adorn the shops on Pushkin Square and Tverskaya Street. The roads, once empty save the occasional official limousine, surge with traffic.

The money from oil, gas, and raw materials is flowing freely, driving this revolution. The biggest gainers, those at the top of the pyramid, are the officials, bureaucrats, and merchants who are part of the export network. Prosperity has trickled down, though, and many Russians have benefited. In 2006, median wages rose by more than 20 percent and the country posted 7 percent growth. Only those living in smaller towns and in the countryside, which still hasn’t recovered from the trauma of agricultural privatization during the nineties, have been left out, Yegor Gaidar informs me.

Gaidar, Boris Yeltsin’s prime minister in 1992 and the architect of Russian privatization, insists that soaring oil and gas prices aren’t the sole reasons for Russia’s economic recovery—indeed, he points out, the recovery began before the oil boom, thanks to the Russian spirit of enterprise and the introduction of the free market. Gaidar famously went in for “shock therapy,” lightning-swift privatization, rather than gradual change. Russians hold him responsible for the disruptions and poverty of the nineties, though it’s unfair to paint him as a villain. He was just the doctor, summoned to do something for an economy in its death throes. His sale of state assets was an attempt at a cure, not the illness.

People tend to forget that Yeltsin had inherited an economy almost wholly dependent on oil. Russia, Gaidar reminds me, could only feed her people by importing food in exchange for oil, a choice made in the twenties after Stalin’s collectivization destroyed the country’s agriculture. As energy prices plummeted in the eighties, Mikhail Gorbachev drove the country deep into debt to maintain food-subsistence levels. When Yeltsin came to power in 1991, Russia stood on the brink of famine, in no position to pay back her debts. The economy had ground to a halt, and oil production was dwindling. It was only after Gaidar’s privatization that production picked up. True, the so-called oligarchs—the well-connected elites of Russia—made a killing, buying state enterprises for a song. Yet they also put the economy back on track. “Their enterprise,” says Gaidar, “saved Russia.”

So is Russia truly a market economy? “We’re almost there,” says Arkady Dvorkovitch, President Vladimir Putin’s 35-year-old economic advisor. Trained in the United States, he has become the icon of the new generation in power. “We still do not have an independent judiciary,” he admits, “nor do we have genuine rule of law and officials who apply the rules rather than embezzle funds”, “almost there” suddenly seeming quite a ways off.

No business can function in Russia without official protection, or having a “roof,” in local parlance. The protection comes at a price, yet foreign investment pours in, proof that, corruption notwithstanding, profits are healthy. Like Gaidar, Dvorkovitch praises the Russian spirit of enterprise. But once you look beyond restaurants, shops, and real estate, I remark, there’s little investment: just 20 percent of national wealth. “It will come, things are happening very fast,” responds Dvorkovitch. The Russians, he claims, are just beginning to have faith in the stability of the new economy; credit based on predictable rules has only just started. But there’s no going back, Dvorkovitch maintains: no one wants a return to socialism. As in the West, the debate is about the role of the state in the market system.

Dvorkovitch would like to see greater market autonomy in investment decisions, rather than the state’s making so many major investments. Despite all the privatizing of the nineties, the state is still heavily involved in the economy—and in the energy sector, it has been retaking control from private companies, both Russian and international. The national ventures are hardly role models when it comes to investment strategy. State-run energy giant Gazprom, for instance, finds it more lucrative to invest its money in the financial market than to explore for new reserves or improve its technology. “It will happen,” asserts Dvorkovitch yet again. “President Putin is keen on investing in new sectors like petrochemicals, food processing, biotechnology, and IT,” he adds, doing his best to sound convincing.

Putin may decree, but nothing happens on the ground,” says former finance minister Yevgeny Yasin. The Russian president, he tells me, thinks that it’s enough to allocate public money for a sector to develop, as if by magic. Putin has yet to realize that in a market economy, development requires an institutional framework. “There can be no major innovation,” Yasin explains, “as long as there is no rule of law and when entrepreneurs who refuse to kowtow to the establishment risk being put behind bars.” Yasin calls the surfeit of oil and gas “the resource curse”; it exonerates both the Russian leadership and people from thinking about needed reforms.

How long will the oil boom last? Forever—or that’s what the current Russian leadership seems to think. The growth potential of China and India has convinced them that oil prices can only rise further, to Russia’s great benefit. When I raise the specter of global warming and the policy response to it, which could result in lower oil and gas consumption, my Russian interlocutors laugh. This is a debate fabricated in the United States, they explain, and it doesn’t cut much ice with the Indians and Chinese—and, in any case, Russian climatologists don’t subscribe to the global warming theory. “Hasn’t Russia ratified the Kyoto Convention on the limiting of greenhouse gases?” I ask. Dvorkovitch is dismissive: it was merely a political gesture.

Economist Vladimir Milov belongs to the same generation as Dvorkovitch, but he chose to leave the government on moral grounds. Unable to accept the high-oil-price way of thinking, Milov spoke his mind, a heroic feat under a regime intolerant of criticism. He succeeded in setting up an energy consultancy, which initiates foreign clients into the mysteries of Russian politics.

“Marxism is very useful in understanding the political life and ideological development of Russia,” Milov observes, aware of the irony. According to Marxism, the economic base determines the ideological superstructures. When Putin took office in 1999, Milov points out, energy prices were low, and the president happily adopted a liberal line and left things to civil society. As soon as energy prices began to rise, and it appeared that they would continue rising for a long time, however, Putin started renationalizing parts of the economy, taking over the media, and restoring to the bureaucracy and the FSB (formerly the KGB) all their old powers.

Oil may prop up the Russian economy, but no market can stay on a rising curve forever, Milov concludes. Sooner or later, prices will begin to fall. As things stand, Russia will not be able to cope.

The sale of oil and gas brings in $150 billion every year; arms sales, a mere $6 billion. Is the oil boom a new Russian curse, or a restoration of national sovereignty? Moscow’s youth lives it up. But some Russians believe that the KGB has never really left the dreaded Lubianka, the city’s dark heart.

In 1991, the people pulled down the statue of Felix Djerzinski, the founder of the KGB. Since then, it has lain on its side in the courtyard of Moscow’s Museum of Modern Art, corroded and covered with weeds. In the same museum, a retrospective is devoted to Oleg Kulik, a video artist who epitomizes new Russian art. Kulik became famous after he walked naked on the streets of Moscow, wearing only a necklace, barking or jumping on passersby to lick or bite them. “Today,” Kulik says, “Russian artists have complete freedom to do what they want—provided that they don’t criticize Putin or the Orthodox Church.”

Thus Moscow 2007: newly prosperous, only partially free—and precarious.

Guy Sorman is the author of numerous books, including The Empire of Lies, forthcoming from Encounter. He lives in Paris and is the president of the publishing house Éditions Sorman.

Kasparov jailed after anti-Putin protest

2007-11-24T21:33:00.001-08:00

Kasparov jailed after anti-Putin protest

By MANSUR MIROVALEV, Associated Press

Russian authorities arrested former world chess champion Garry Kasparov on Saturday and sentenced him to five days in prison after he helped lead a protest against President Vladimir Putin that ended in clashes with police.

Kasparov, one of President Vladimir Putin's harshest critics, was charged with organizing an unsanctioned procession of at least 1,500 people against Putin, chanting anti-government slogans and resisting arrest, court documents said. His assistant said he was beaten during the demonstration.

At the hastily organized trial, two police testified that they had been ordered before the rally to arrest Kasparov.

"What you read is the fruit of a fantasy dictated on orders from above," Kasparov told the court.

The violence came amid an election campaign in which some opposition political groups have been sidelined by new election rules or have complained of being hobbled by official harassment.

The Kremlin has mounted a major campaign to orchestrate a crushing victory for Putin's United Russia party in Dec. 2 parliamentary elections — perhaps to ensure that Putin can continue to rule Russia even after he steps down as president in May. The constitution prevents him from serving three consecutive terms.

The fracas also comes at a time of growing concern in the West over the state of democracy in Russia, with western critics saying freedoms have been curtailed during Putin's eight years in office. Putin accuses the West of meddling in Russian politics.

Kasparov and dozens of other demonstrators were detained after the rally which drew several thousand people.

The opposition activist was forced to the ground and beaten, his assistant Marina Litvinovich said in a telephone interview from outside the police station where Kasparov was held.

"Putin's brakes don't work," Kasparov told a reporter in the courtroom. "I didn't hear any orders from police, unless you count the strike of a police club as an order."

Protesters were surrounded by metal fences and funneled through metal detectors while hundreds of uniformed police and interior ministry troops stood by. Men in black coats who refused to identify themselves circulated through the crowd shooting video.

After the rally ended, a line of helmeted police tried to prevent a march and channel protesters back toward a nearby Metro station.

Among the dozens of demonstrators arrested was Eduard Limonov, author and leader of the National Bolshevik Party, Kasparov's closest partner in a coalition of anti-Kremlin organizations. Supporters said he was later released.

Police in other Russian cities, including Nizhny Novgorod and Samara, detained local opposition protest organizers, according to the Interfax news agency.

Kasparov's coalition, which includes radicals, democrats and Soviet-era dissidents, has drawn wide media coverage but generated little public support.

Its ranks have expanded, though, as more mainstream political parties complain that officials have excluded them from freely contesting the upcoming elections.

On Friday, the Moscow offices of Kasparov's political organization were searched by police, who seized campaign materials, and the headquarters of the opposition Union of Right Forces party was hit by vandals, the groups said.

Police in Moscow and several other cities have used force to break up several so-called Dissenters Marches in the past year, sometimes beating protesters with truncheons.

The city gave organizers a permit for Saturday's rally but forbid them to march.

Meanwhile, an opposition party candidate from Russia's troubled Dagestan region who was shot by unidentified gunmen earlier this week died Saturday of his wounds.

Farid Babayev, a Yabloko party candidate, was shot Wednesday in the entryway to his apartment. His party's leader linked the killing to Babayev's efforts to hold authorities accountable for human rights abuses in Dagestan.

Yabloko party leader Grigory Yavlinsky called Babayev "one more victim of the authoritarian regime of Putin, where the physical destruction of your political opponents has become the norm."

Ex-Kremlin Insiders Join Russian Protest

2007-11-23T10:02:00.000-08:00

MOSCOW (AP) — Once they were pillars of Russia's political establishment, members of a pro-business party with a presence in parliament and influence in the halls of the Kremlin.

But now the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, teeters on the edge of political extinction, and its leaders plan to join protesters in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg this weekend to denounce President Vladimir Putin's rule.

Putin has described the demonstrators as extremists determined to weaken Russia. But by tightening election rules and restricting access to Russia's political arena, the Kremlin has given even its most cautious, conservative rivals little choice but to take their opposition to the streets.

Nikita Belykh, the party's national leader, last week accused the government of using "totalitarian and barbaric methods" to sabotage his group's campaign for the Dec. 2 parliamentary elections. He said candidates have been offered bribes — or even threatened — to try to push them off the party's ticket.

In a televised debate, Belykh said he regretted the SPS' support for Putin when he first ran for president eight years ago.

"Yes, we were wrong," he said. "Putin was our mistake."

Boris Nemtsov, another national SPS leader, previously showed little appetite for confronting Putin. In a recent campaign ad, though, he denounced the "cruelty, cynicism and indifference of those in power." And he called the platform of the main pro-Kremlin party, United Russia, "all lies."

Noted intellectuals such as former chess champion Garry Kasparov and the free-market economist Andrei Illarionov, once one of Putin's top advisers, months ago joined the opposition demonstrators. So did the measured Vladimir Ryzhkov, a member of parliament whose Republican Party was one of more than a half-dozen denied registration under the new election rules.

But the leaders of SPS criticized the protests, saying more could be accomplished by talking to the Kremlin than by confronting authorities. That has changed in recent months as the party's campaign for parliament has run into roadblocks across Russia. While SPS presents no real threat to United Russia, which is expected to win two-thirds of the vote, a strong showing by the liberal party could prevent a crushing victory in some regions — embarrassing local officials.

"The governors ... must show brilliant results for the president," said Dmitry Oreshkin, a political analyst who heads the Moscow-based Mercator Group. "How they do it is their problem."

One place where the local SPS party is under pressure is in Siberia's Krasnoyarsk region. Vladislav Korolyov, the local party chief, said police entered a printing plant this month and seized more than 1.5 million copies of the party's campaign newspaper.

The grounds? An article on inflation named a Moscow supermarket, which authorities claimed amounted to prohibited negative advertising. Police could not immediately be reached for comment.

Korolyov said employees of the state-owned Sberbank told several would-be contributors that the bank could not process their donations — as required by Russian law. In one case, he said, a clerk said she had been told by a superior not to deposit SPS contributions. Sberbank officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Meeting hall managers, sometimes citing pressure from authorities, have turned down SPS requests to rent space for rallies — and in some cases revoked signed contracts, Korolyov said.

"I consider this political censorship and a return to the police state," he said, sitting in his cramped office in the Krasnoyarsk regional legislature, off a square where a statue of Vladimir Lenin still broods.

SPS gets little media coverage here. The Moscow-based radio station Ekho Moskvy, one of the few media outlets where opposition voices are routinely heard, was taken off local airwaves earlier this year.

Meanwhile, United Russia's campaign in Krasnoyarsk is in full swing. Billboards trumpeting United Russia's slogan, "Putin's Plan is Russia's Victory," line the streets.

Selling cuts of pork at a Krasnoyarsk market, a resigned Natalia Ivanova said the election's outcome will be dictated by officials, not voters.

"We've talked to friends, neighbors, family, even customers," said Ivanova, 43. "They don't vote for United Russia, but United Russia somehow wins."

Below: Part of Putin's Nov 21st Speech at United Russia Rally

My Apologies

2007-11-22T13:01:00.001-08:00

I apologize to those of you who have regularly looked at my blog for news in the past several months. I have been unable to post for a few reasons but will try to get back into the usual swing of things. Thanks to those of you who keep checking in.

I would recommend checking out http://www.russia.ru/ . This is put together by the same folks that brought you www.nashe.ru and other putin establishment members, this will send chills (the bad kind) down your back. It's very reminiscent of the youth movement in the USSR.

Happy Holidays and I hope to have some more information up soon.

Why Russia Recents US Tack

2007-07-03T06:41:00.001-07:00

As Bush hosts Putin to repair fraying ties, a mood of misgiving rooted in the 1990s looms over the summit.

By Fred Weir Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

As presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin began their 24-hour visit in Kennebunkport, Maine, Sunday to patch up a fraying relationship, a long list of flash points loomed over them.
But what may weigh most heavily is a mood of misgiving rooted in the 1990s a decade that saw social breakdown, impoverishment, and democratic eclipse in Russia. For many in the West, the realization that ties with Russia are in trouble has dawned only recently. But the narrative of many Russians recalls nearly two decades of "unfair" treatment, beginning with the betrayal of hopes that the West would build a post-cold-war order that Russia could fully belong to.

Russian anger is currently focused on a plan that is likely to top the agenda in Kennebunkport: US intentions to install 10 antimissile interceptors in Poland, with associated radars in the Czech Republic. The US says the system is intended to defend against a potential missile threat from rogue states, such as Iran, but Russia fears the weapons will erode its strategic nuclear deterrent. Putin has threatened to target Russian missiles on Europe, for the first time since the cold war, if deployments go ahead.

Washington's cool reaction to a Russian counterproposal that the US use a Soviet-era radar in Azerbaijan instead has sent white-hot rhetoric pouring out of Moscow. "Not only will the deployment of missile-defense components in Europe upset the strategic military parity, but it will also put at risk the mechanism of security interaction between Russia and [the West]," Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said last week. This may perplex many in the West, who may wonder why the Kremlin can't accept repeated assurances by US officials that Russia is no longer regarded as an enemy. But some Russians warn that they see no room for trust. "Americans may not understand it, but this [missile-defense] issue is the last straw for us," says Andrei Klimov, a member of the State Duma's subcommittee on cooperation in Europe. "They need to evaluate the past two decades, and maybe they'll see why we are so upset these days."

In the West, this newly assertive Russia is widely perceived as the brainchild of Putin, a former KGB agent who has allegedly derailed his country's effort to build democracy, muzzled the media, used its energy-resources muscle to bully Russia's neighbors, and stepped out on the world stage with an aggressive neo-Soviet agenda. From this viewpoint, the contrast with the 1990s appears stark. Under former President Boris Yeltsin, Russia appeared to be building democracy at home and following Western advice to privatize its economy, open its markets, and welcome outside investment.

Though Mr. Yeltsin grumbled constantly, Moscow ultimately accepted the expansion of NATO to ex-Soviet allies in Eastern Europe and even cooperated with US-led efforts to impose order in the former Yugoslavia. "Russia didn't seem to present any problems to the West because its weakness made it compliant," says Mr. Klimov. "So, they decided we didn't matter and got used to doing things without considering our needs or wishes." The West was perceived to be actively intervening in Russia during those years, with advice, loans, and political support for Yeltsin which, rightly or wrongly, left the impression that the country's multiple woes were created from outside.

"In the Russian establishment, there is a growing feeling today that any 'solutions' offered by the West are mainly wrong," says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading foreign policy journal. "This was not the case a decade ago, when the West's success seemed to argue that they knew how things should be done. Now that feeling is gone." Russian experts say the Bush administration should drop its previous complacency and realize that a serious breakdown in relations with Moscow is looming, and that forums like the face-to-face meeting in Kennebunkport may be the last chance to head it off.

"Each of the problems between us is not so serious taken separately, but together they present a very dangerous picture indeed," says Klimov. President Bush, he says, should try to "think like a Russian for five minutes, and try to see things as we see them" before he goes into that next meeting with Putin."

Kremlin lays claim to huge chunk of oil-rich North Pole

2007-06-28T07:15:00.000-07:00

Kremlin lays claim to huge chunk of oil-rich North Pole

It is already the world's biggest country, spanning 11 time zones and stretching from Europe to the far east. But yesterday Russia signalled its intention to get even bigger by announcing an audacious plan to annex a vast 460,000 square mile chunk of the frozen and ice-encrusted Arctic.

According to Russian scientists, there is new evidence backing Russia's claim that its northern Arctic region is directly linked to the North Pole via an underwater shelf. Under international law, no country owns the North Pole. Instead, the five surrounding Arctic states, Russia, the US, Canada, Norway and Denmark (via Greenland), are limited to a 200-mile economic zone around their coasts.

On Monday, however, a group of Russian geologists returned from a six-week voyage on a nuclear icebreaker. They had travelled to the Lomonosov ridge, an underwater shelf in Russia's remote and inhospitable eastern Arctic Ocean. According to Russia's media, the geologists returned with the "sensational news" that the Lomonosov ridge was linked to Russian Federation territory, boosting Russia's claim over the oil-and-gas rich triangle. The territory contained 10bn tonnes of gas and oil deposits, the scientists said.

Russia's Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper celebrated the discovery by printing a large map of the North Pole. It showed the new "addition" to Russia - the size of France, Germany and Italy combined - under a white, blue and red Russian flag. Yesterday, however, some scientists doubted whether Russia's latest Arctic grab stood up to scrutiny. To extend a zone, a state has to prove that the structure of the continental shelf is similar to the geological structure within its territory. Under the current UN convention on the laws of the sea, no country's shelf extends to the North Pole. Instead, the International Seabed Authority administers the area around the pole as an international area.

"Frankly I think it's a little bit strange," Sergey Priamikov, the international co-operation director of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St Petersburg, told the Guardian. "Canada could make exactly the same claim. The Canadians could say that the Lomonosov ridge is part of the Canadian shelf, which means Russia should in fact belong to Canada, together with the whole of Eurasia." Mr Priamikov said the area was one of breathtaking natural beauty. It was much drier, colder and quieter than the western Arctic, he added. "I've been there many times. It's an oasis for marine life," he said. Asked whether it would be feasible to drill for oil, he said: "Yes".

The shelf was 200 metres deep and oil and gas would be easy to extract, especially with ice melting because of global warming, he said. Russia has the world's largest gas reserves. It is the second largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia. The Kremlin is keen to secure Russia's long-term hegemony over global energy markets, and to find new sources of fuel. Russia first made a submission in 2001 to the UN commission on the limits of the continental shelf, seeking to push Russia's maritime borders beyond the existing 200-mile zone. It was rejected.

But the latest scientific findings are likely to prompt Russia to lodge another confident bid - and will alarm the US, which is mired in a 13-year debate over ratification of a UN treaty governing international maritime rights. The Law of the Sea Treaty is the world's primary means of settling disputes over exploitation rights and navigational routes in international waters. Russia and 152 other countries have ratified it. But the US has refused, arguing it gives too much power to the UN. If the US does not ratify it, Russia's bid for the Arctic's energy wealth will go unchallenged, proponents believe.

Lantos to Host Russian Leaders for First-Ever Joint Congress-Duma Meeting Open to the Public

2007-06-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

(some commentary which I usually do not do....but while this is a great event to have, it's a shame that it's worthless because the Russian Duma has about as much power in Russia as the delegate from guam has here in america)

Lantos to Host Russian Leaders for First-Ever Joint Congress-Duma Meeting Open to the Public

Washington, DC - Chairman Tom Lantos today announced the schedule for a ground-breaking, open meeting next week between the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the foreign affairs committee of the Duma, the legislature of the Russian Federation.

"The United States and Russia are facing a wide range of challenges," Lantos noted. "Thus, it is singularly appropriate that we continue our useful tradition of dialogue and inter-parliamentary exchange. And this time, all the world can listen in on the conversation." The June 21 joint session will mark the third in the series of meetings between the American and Russian foreign affairs committees, with previous sessions held in Moscow (June 2004) and Washington (November 2005). It will be the first such meeting ever to which the media and members of the public will be invited.

The gathering will focus on four key themes: democracy and human rights, unresolved regional conflicts, strategic stability and trade and economic issues "This joint session will be ground-breaking," Lantos said. "I look forward to meeting with my Russian colleagues to discuss pressing issues such as human rights and regional stability, to discuss our differences and to expand our common ground."

Agenda for Public Session of Joint Meeting

June 21, 2007 Room 2172 of the Rayburn House Office Building

10:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Opening Statements
10:30 a.m. - 10:55 a.m. Humanitarian Issues (including democracy, human rights)
10:55 a.m. - 11:20 a.m. Unresolved Regional Conflicts (including Kosova, Georgia, Moldova)
11:20 a.m. - 11:40 a.m. Strategic Stability (including the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, non-proliferation, missile defense)
11:40 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Trade and Economy (including energy security)

Following the morning's public session, members of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Duma will meet for a private lunch and an afternoon closed-door session.

Putin calls for new financial world order

2007-06-11T07:27:00.000-07:00

By Neil Buckley and Catherine Belton in St Petersburg

Russian president Vladimir Putin called on Sunday for a radical overhaul of the world’s financial and trade institutions to reflect the growing economic power of emerging market countries – including Russia. Mr Putin said the world needed to create a new international financial architecture to replace an existing model that had become “archaic, undemocratic and unwieldy”.

His apparent challenge to western dominance of the world economic order came at a forum in St Petersburg designed to showcase the country’s economic recovery. Among 6,000 delegates at the biggest business forum ever held in post-Soviet Russia were scores of international chief executives including heads of Deutsche Bank, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Nestlé, Chevron, Siemens and Coca-Cola.

Business deals worth more than $4bn were signed at the conference – including an order by Aeroflot for Boeing jets – as executives said they were continuing to invest in Russia despite deteriorating relations with the west. Mr Putin’s hosting of the forum capped a week in which he dominated the international stage. He warned last Monday that Russia might target nuclear missiles at Europe if the US built a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, then offered a compromise at the G8 summit involving switching part of the US system to Azerbaijan.
His speech on financial institutions suggested that, along with an aggressive recent campaign against US “unilateralism” in foreign policy, he was also seeking to challenge western dominance of the world economic order.

Mr Putin said 50 years ago, 60 per cent of world gross domestic product came from the Group of Seven industrial nations. Today, 60 per cent of world GDP came from outside the G7. “The interests of stable economic development would be best served by a new architecture of international economic relations based on trust and mutually beneficial integration,” Mr Putin said. The Russian president said there was increasing evidence that existing organisations were “not doing a good job regulating global economic relations”.

“Institutions created with a focus on a small number of active players sometimes look archaic, undemocratic and unwieldy. They are a far cry from recognising the existing balance of power,” he said.

Police Seize Drafts of Books on Putin

2007-06-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

DOUGLAS BIRCHAssociated Press Writer

MOSCOW (AP) - A Russian journalist said Friday that law enforcement officials searched his apartment and carted off computers that contained draft chapters of two books he was writing about President Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Pribylovsky said he was told the seizures were part of an investigation into the unsolved slaying of a former senior official of the main successor agency to the KGB. But Pribylovsky, who runs a Web site critical of the Kremlin, said he suspects officials were really interested in finding out what he planned to publish about Putin. "I believe that they wanted to read what I was writing," he told The Associated Press. The Moscow prosecutor's office declined to comment.

Pribylovsky said he had previously written about the killing of Col.- Gen. Anatoly Trofimov, a former deputy head of the Federal Security Service shot in 2005 by a masked gunman outside his Moscow home. The author said that he agreed to remove some materials relating to the case from his Web site three months ago at the request of officials. The working titles for the books are "Putin's Comrades," and "Operation Successor," said Pribylovsky, who was working on the latter with Yuri Felshtinsky, a historian and author living in the United States. Felshtinsky told the AP that his co-author's computers contained "a huge volume of information" on ranking government officials. "There is a lot of very interesting and important information, which might be lost because they could drag on the investigation, any investigation, for some years now, and the idea was to publish the book before the election," Felshtinsky said.

Felshtinsky co-authored a book, "Blowing Up Russia," with Alexander Litvinenko, who died in a London hospital in November after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210. The book alleged that Russian security forces had played a role in a series of mysterious bombings of apartment buildings in Russia in 1999 that killed more than 300 people. The explosions were blamed on Chechen rebels and served as a key reason for the Kremlin to launch the second war in Chechnya. After Litvinenko's death, Felshtinsky said, he and Pribylovsky continued to collaborate on "Operation Successor," parts of which have been published in various periodicals. But the two authors halted all direct contacts out of concern for Pribylovsky's safety.
"Pribylovsky is in a much more dangerous position than I am because I am in the United States and he is in Russia," Felshtinsky said.
British prosecutors have named Andrei Lugovoi, a Moscow businessman and former FSB agent, as their chief suspect in Litvinenko's murder.
The search of Pribylovsky's apartment took place the same day that Lugovoi held a news conference to protest his innocence, and to claim there was evidence the British secret services were involved in the slaying.

Russia tests new rocket to beat missile defenses

2007-05-29T08:01:00.000-07:00

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday featuring multiple warheads which can overcome missile defense systems, the defense Ministry said. A ministry spokesman said the RS-24 missile was fired from a mobile launcher at 1020 GMT from the Plesetsk cosmodrome about 800 km (500 miles) north of Moscow. Less than an hour later, Russia's Strategic Missile Forces command said the missile had hit its targets at the Kura test site on the sparsely inhabited far eastern peninsula of Kamchatka to the north of Japan.

"The RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile will strengthen the military potential of Russia's strategic rocket forces to overcome anti-missile defense systems and thereby strengthen the potential nuclear deterrent of Russia's strategic nuclear forces," the Strategic Missile Forces command said in a statement. The launch comes amid a row between Moscow and Washington over U.S. plans to build a system in Europe to detect and shoot down hostile missiles. Russia believes the missile defense shield is a threat to its security while Washington dismisses such fears, saying the shield is intended to counter rogue states.

President Vladimir Putin promised in February this year a "highly effective response" to any U.S. efforts to deploy missile defenses, raising fears of a new arms race between the former Cold War foes. Further escalating the tension, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Tuesday that the deployment of medium and short range missiles by Russia's neighbors to the east and south now posed a "real threat".

"The Soviet-American treaty (on intermediate nuclear forces) is not effective because since (its signature) scores of countries have appeared that have such missiles while Russia and the United States are not allowed to have them," Ivanov told a military-industrial commission in the southern city of Znamensk. "In these conditions, it is necessary to provide our troops with modern, high-precision weapons." Ivanov, a former defense minister and leading hawk, is widely tipped as a front-runner to succeed President Vladimir Putin in elections next March though he has not said whether he will run.

The new RS-24 missile tested on Tuesday can be armed with up to 10 different warheads and is intended to replace Russia's earlier generation intercontinental missiles such as the RS-18 and RS-20. Its development is part of a drive to re-equip Russia's military with updated weaponry and replace hardware dating from the Cold War. Missiles carrying multiple independently targeted warheads are more difficult to intercept and destroy completely once they have been fired, making defenses against them much harder.

EU questions Russian human rights record

2007-05-18T11:07:00.000-07:00

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, AP

European Union leaders criticized Russia's human rights record — and were faulted in return — at the end of a summit Friday that produced no formal agreements but helped illustrate the widening political chasm between Moscow and the West. German Chancellor Angela Merkel complained that opposition activists were being prevented from traveling to a planned protest in the Volga River city of Samara, near the site of the EU-Russia summit. "I'm concerned about some people having problems in traveling here," Merkel told reporters. "I hope they will be given an opportunity to express their opinion."

Among the activists kept from boarding flights was former chess champion Garry Kasparov, now a leading political foe of President Vladimir Putin. Officials confiscated activists' passports and tickets at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, and held them for about five hours. Activists in Samara also said they were harassed. Russia's democratic freedoms and its treatment of critics are two of the most sensitive issues haunting Russia-EU relations. Merkel's remark came during a sometimes fractious exchange over the topics between Putin and EU leaders at a news conference.

Putin said his government does not fear protests, but insisted government opponents must abide by official regulations. He also blamed some violence on demonstrators. "They don't bother me in any way," Putin said of the so-called "Dissenters' Marches" staged by Kasparov and others, which police have brutally dispersed. "All those who want to stage demonstrations in accordance with the law have such an opportunity," he said. "But some provoke law enforcement forces to use force, and they respond accordingly."

Local officials had sanctioned the Dissenters' March in Samara that authorities kept Kasparov and others from attending. Putin deflected allegations that the Kremlin fears letting critics be heard. "There is no reason to fear marginal groups, especially so small," he said. He also criticized European governments, noting that German police have detained protesters. "Law enforcement authorities in practically all countries make preventative arrests, there are examples in Germany," he said. "Such action isn't always justified."

Merkel responded that police action during violent riots could be justified, but added: "If a person hasn't done anything yet, if he's just on his way to a demonstration, that's a completely different case." Putin also assailed the EU for failing to respond to the death of a Russian citizen during clashes between police and ethnic Russian protesters in Estonia over the moving of a Soviet-era war memorial in Tallinn, the Estonian capital. Tensions between Russia and Estonia cast a cloud over the summit.

Estonian government Web sites have come under massive cyber attacks in the weeks following the memorial's removal, and Estonian officials have suggested the attacks may have been coordinated by the Russian government. Russia denies that. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters at Volzhsky Utyos, a riverside resort, that democracy and rule of law are "sacred principles for the EU." "We stress the importance of democracy, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of demonstration," he said. "These are values (which) I'm sure, unite, not divide us. It's very important for all European countries, and Russia is a European country ... to ensure the full respect of those principles and values."

As they argued over Russia's alleged rollback of democracy and the lack of progress in a dispute over a Russian ban on Polish meat, Putin and the EU leaders pointed to progress in trade and economic ties. Though no formal deals were reached at the summit, Putin said he and the EU leaders agreed to extend EU-Russia cooperation on cross-border trade, visa issues and scientific and technical cooperation. Putin also sought to present the Polish meat dispute as a bilateral problem that blocked the expansion of Russia-EU ties.

"We need each other, we are open for an honest dialogue between Russia and the EU," Putin said at one point. "But we must defend our interests in the same professional way as our partners do that." Merkel and Barroso emphasized European solidarity. "A Polish problem is a European problem," Barroso said. More than 100 protesters gathered at a square in Samara in the late afternoon, outnumbered by police, and marched through the streets shouting slogans including "Russia without Putin!" and "We need another Russia."

Several protesters held black-yellow-and-white flags of Other Russia, an opposition movement that includes Kasparov's United Civil Front. A few held a banner reading "Russian without Putin and successors."

U.S., Russians, agree to ease rhetoric

2007-05-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press

Russia and the United States have agreed to moderate their rhetoric in a bid to improve strained ties, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday after Rice met with President Vladimir Putin. Rice said recent comments by Putin and other Russians had not been "helpful" to relations and had obscured positive developments and cooperation on a wide range of issues.

"We did talk about the need to keep the temperature down," she said after seeing Putin in an effort to calm rising tensions between the former Cold War enemies. She described some remarks as "overheated rhetoric," while accepting a Russian explanation that Putin's recent reference in a speech to Nazi Germany, widely perceived as criticism of the United States, was not intended to slight the Bush administration.

"I have said while I am here that the rhetoric is not helpful," Rice told reporters. "It is disturbing to Americans who are trying to do our best to maintain an even relationship."
"We are going to have our differences, there is no doubt about that. There are going to be old scars to overcome, there is no doubt about that ... But the relationship needs to be free of exaggerated rhetoric," she said.

Speaking separately, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Putin agreed. "The president supported the American side's understanding that it's necessary to tone down the rhetoric in public statements and concentrate on concrete business," Lavrov, who participated in the meeting, told reporters. Lavrov also suggested Rice had not dispelled Russia's opposition to U.S. plans to station a defense missile system in Europe, saying that "our stance on missile defense was reaffirmed." Rice said missile defense continued to be an area that the two countries needed "to work through" but that no country, including Russia, would have a "veto" on issues related to U.S. national security.

In another key area, Lavrov said that the two countries agreed to search for a mutually acceptable solution on Kosovo, but failed to achieve a breakthrough. "It was agreed to search for a solution on Kosovo that would be acceptable for all, but there is no such solution immediately in sight," he said after taking part in the meeting at Putin's residence outside Moscow. There has been growing transoceanic tension about the U.S. missile defense plan, concern in Washington about Moscow's treatment of its neighbors and steps Putin has taken to consolidate power in the Kremlin — seen as democratic backsliding — as Russia prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections next year.

Rice headed into the talks in Moscow acknowledging that ties were tense, but rejecting suggestions that a "new Cold War" had erupted. "I don't throw around terms like 'new Cold War,'" Rice said. "It is a big, complicated relationship, but it is not one that is anything like the implacable hostility" between the United States and the Soviet Union for a half-century after World War II.

"It is not an easy time in the relationship," Rice added, "but it is also not, I think, a time in which cataclysmic things are affecting the relationship or catastrophic things are happening in the relationship." She noted that the United States and Russia are working together in numerous areas: on Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs, the global spread of weapons of mass destruction and efforts to achieve Middle East peace.

Despite the agreement to cool down the rhetoric, a planned event at which Rice and Putin were to be photographed together and make brief remarks was canceled by the Kremlin and a senior Russian diplomat on Monday warned the U.S. not to try to go it alone in world affairs. In April, simmering Russian anger over U.S. plans to place missile defense components in Poland and the Czech Republic, both former Warsaw Pact members, boiled over despite Washington's pledges to cooperate with Moscow on the system.

Russia views the plan as an attempt to alter the strategic balance. Rice has dismissed such concerns as "ludicrous," but top Russian military officials have hinted the system might be targeted. Last month, hours before the United States and its NATO allies met in Norway to discuss the matter, Putin threatened to suspend Russia's participation in a key treaty limiting military deployments in Europe.

Rice says that NATO and the United States want to keep the Conventional Forces in Europe pact alive but cannot unless Russia abides with its treaty commitments.
Russia views U.S. activity in its former sphere of influence with growing suspicion. Just last week, Putin denounced "disrespect for human life, claims to global exclusiveness and dictate, just as it was in the time of the Third Reich."

Riot police show strength to warn troublemakers

2007-05-11T07:03:00.000-07:00

By James Kilner

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Techno and rock music blared away as the bare-chested Russian policeman lay on his back on a pile of broken glass and nails. A colleague dropped three daggers, point down, on his stomach and trampled on his chest. Russia's special police, the OMON, were showing what they are made of. Kremlin critics and Western governments accused them of using excessive force to break up opposition protests last month. But the message they were sending on Thursday was they were ready to take on any troublemakers in a year when more protests are likely as Russia prepares to elect a new president.

"This is a warning," said an OMON colonel who called himself Vladimir Antonovich as he watched three policemen smash flaming bricks with their bare fists. "We want to show off what we can do." Last month foreign embassies and the EU said the OMON was too heavy-handed when it used batons to break up anti-Kremlin protests, called "March of the Dissenters," in Moscow and St Petersburg, and detained journalists. "The police were provoked in St Petersburg," Antonovich, the colonel, said, dressed in the OMON's urban camouflage uniform. "What does the March of the Dissenters need? It needs media coverage and they provoked the police into a reaction."

Crowd control is not the OMON's only role. Equipped with machine guns and armored vehicles, they patrol Russia's volatile Chechnya region and are trained to rescue hostages.
At a media event to which foreign journalists had been invited for the first time, the OMON showed off textbook crowd control techniques. Wearing crash helmets and body armor and carrying shields the police swung their batons in unison and marched forward one step at a time.

"KNOW NO MERCY"

Opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who say he has trampled on democracy, have organized several protests. The authorities have mainly banned these marches or allowed watered-down versions and several times in the last few months protesters and police have clashed. An investigation has yet to judge if the police used excessive force.
In the sprawling, wooded base, a 1-1/2 hour drive from central Moscow the police reveled in showing their muscle. Unarmed police karate-kicked and punched "criminals" armed with knives, pistols and machineguns. They broke planks of wood over each others' backs, smashed glass jars filled with water with their bare hands, fired magazines of ammunition into the air and demonstrated various ways to break an aggressor's legs, arms and neck. Other displays showed off the latest patrol techniques in Chechnya, hostage rescue and the OMON's weapons from sniper rifles to pistols.

Later, in a newly redecorated gymnasium, Russia's Deputy Interior Minister Mikhail Sukhodolsky expounded the importance of the OMON to ensure peace and stability in Russia.
He said there are 20,000 OMON police across the country and that last year 38 died on active service. Behind him hung the Moscow OMON division's badge -- bearing the powerful bull-like bison -- and its motto: "Special forces know no mercy and never ask for it. That is how it was, how it is and how it will be."

Scientist says Putin's Russia worse than under Stalin

2007-05-06T17:40:00.000-07:00

Sun May 6

The pursuit of science in President Vladimir Putin's Russia is driven by profit alone and there was less government interference even under Josef Stalin, a Russian Nobel Prize winner said in a interview. Vitaly Ginzburg's comments to the Sunday Telegraph newspaper are likely to put Russia's scientists back on a collision course with the Kremlin. In March, Russia's Academy of Sciences, founded by Tsar Peter the Great, spurned a government plan to establish a new supervisory council that would control the body's finances and include officials from the presidential administration.

The government says the reform of the Academy is desperately needed to reverse the continuing brain drain from Russia, make research work lucrative for a generation of young scientists and help build the hi-tech economy Putin has set as his goal. "Of course, in Stalin's times the Academy was under the control of the central committee of the Communist Party," Ginzburg told the paper. "But in those days you could come up with an idea and create -- that's how we put the first Sputnik satellite into space. Now the government thinks science must bring only income and profit, which is absurd."

"Of course it is about Putin. Our democracy is far from ideal," said Ginzburg, 90, who shared the 2003 Nobel Prize for physics with fellow countryman Alexei Abrikosov. Putin, whose second -- and last -- four-year term ends next year, enjoys vast popularity nationwide while the economy is fast growing, people's incomes are rising and state coffers groan from windfall revenues from booming oil exports.

But critics at home and abroad accuse the Russian leader of backtracking on democratic reforms and establishing tight control over the bureaucracy and the economy. They say he is trying to bring the academy under his sway as well. Supporters of the reforms say too many institutions are run by cliques of elderly academics who resist change while promising young scientists are tempted abroad for better pay and opportunities. The Academy has boasted dozens of Nobel prize winners in its near 300-year history.

Sticks and Stones

2007-05-01T08:58:00.000-07:00

By Fred Thompson

It bothers Americans when we're told how unpopular we are with the rest of the world. For some of us, at least, it gets our back up -- and our natural tendency is to tell the French, for example, that we'd rather not hear from them until the day when they need us to bail them out again. But we cool off. We're big boys and girls, after all, and we don't really bruise that easily. We're also hopeful that, eventually, our ostrich-headed allies will realize there's a World War going on out there and they need to pick a side -- the choice being between the forces of civilization and the forces of anarchy. Considering the fact that the latter team is growing stronger and bolder daily, while most of our European Union friends continue to dismantle their defenses, that day may not be too long in coming. In the meantime, let's be realistic about the world we live in. Mexican leaders apparently have an economic policy based on exporting their own citizens, while complaining about US immigration policies that are far less exclusionary than their own. The French jail perfectly nice people for politically incorrect comments, but scold us for holding terrorists at Guantanamo.

Russia, though, takes the cake. Here is a government apparently run by ex-KGB agents who have no problem blackmailing whole countries by turning the crank on their oil pipelines. They're not doing anything shady, they say. They can’t help it if their opponents are so notoriously accident-prone. Criticize these guys and you might accidentally drink a cup of tea laced with a few million dollars worth of deadly, and extremely rare, radioactive poison. Oppose the Russian leadership, and you could trip and fall off a tall building or stumble into the path of a bullet.

The hundreds of demonstrators the Kremlin has had beaten and arrested in the last few weeks alone, we are told, were not pro-democracy activists but common criminals -- like world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Demonstrating without a permit is a serious crime and, luckily for the Kremlin, it turns out that pro-government youth groups seem always to have permits for rallies at the exact times and places that anti-government protesters gather.

Another group that seems to be having trouble with permits is the media. Newspapers and television stations that aren't smart enough to know that America is the enemy and that things are great in Russia can't seem to get their paperwork in order. It’s some sort of IQ test, I guess.
President Vladimir Putin, though, shows no sign that he feels defensive about his remarkable string of luck. He knows who's really to blame for "meddling" in Russian "internal affairs." It's the United States.

He's lambasting us for yielding too much power. One example of this excessive power is the missile defense radar system we want to install in Poland and the Czech Republic -- to give the free world early warning of a missile attack by terrorists or a rogue nation like Iran. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that the Russians have been supplying Iran with both nuclear and missile technology while using their UN veto to block sanctions that would force Tehran to back down. Regardless, we're clearly at fault, he says, for putting a defense system close to Mother Russia.
So I wouldn't worry too much about the criticisms we receive. We make mistakes and at times the "carping" may even be on target, but it seems to me that we ought to look at a lot of the complaints as a badge of honor.

Fred Thompson is an actor and former Senator. His radio commentary airs on the ABC Radio Network and be blogs on The Fred Thompson Report.

Putin accuses foreigners of meddling in Russia's affairs

2007-04-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press Thursday, April 26, 2007

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin, combative and unrepentant in the face of criticism of his heavy-handed rule, charged Thursday that foreigners seeking to thwart Russia's resurgence were increasingly interfering in its affairs. He also declared in his State of the Nation address that he would not seek a third term, but refused to name his preferred successor and said nothing to quell speculation that he would seek to remain in power behind the scenes. Putin's second term, his last under the Constitution, ends in 2008. Last month, the head of the upper house of Parliament proposed amending the Constitution to let him stay in office.
But Putin has consistently dismissed that idea, and his statement in the speech underlined the point clearly. "The next State of the Nation address will be given by another head of state," he said. He then acknowledged that many had expected this speech to be his opportunity to openly state whom he wanted to succeed him, but instead he drew a laugh by saying that "it is premature for me to declare a political will."

Russia is entering a high-stakes political season, with parliamentary elections in December followed by presidential elections in March. Russian officials in recent months have complained that Western countries are trying to meddle in the political process by financing domestic organizations, and Putin echoed those charges. "There is a growth in the flow of money from abroad for direct interference in our internal affairs," Putin said in his address, delivered to the Federation Council, the upper house of Parliament. "There are those who, skillfully using pseudo-democratic rhetoric, would like to return to the recent past - some to loot the country's national riches, to rob the people and the state; others to strip us of economic and political independence."

Putin did not cite specific countries as sources of money. The Foreign Ministry complained extensively this month about U.S. financing of organizations whose stated goal is to promote democracy in Russia. Russian officials contend that the true aim of such financing is to provoke mass opposition protests like those that helped propel pro-Western leaders into power in neighboring Georgia and Ukraine in recent years. The Russian police harshly cracked down on a series of opposition protest marches this year, beating some demonstrators and detaining hundreds.

Opposition forces charge that Putin is strangling democracy through an array of measures to centralize power and increase the influence of large political parties.
In the parliamentary elections in December, seats will be distributed entirely on a party-list basis, eliminating the opportunity for small parties to win seats through strong local support in particular districts. Critics say the change is among the measures intended to smother opposition. But Putin said it was part of "a revolutionary step modernizing the elections system" that would "help the opposition widen its representation."The death Monday of Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, drew new attention to complaints that Putin is heading the country away from democracy. Yeltsin, as Russia's first post-Soviet leader, instituted changes that encouraged pluralism and nudged the country toward democracy.

Putin also praised the development of Russia's economy, which has soared during his presidency, driven largely by high worldwide oil prices. Brusquely dismissing protests by Russian officials, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that a missile-defense system the United States hopes to install in Poland and the Czech Republic would pose no danger to the security of Russia, The New York Times reported from Oslo. "The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in Eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous, and everybody knows it," Rice said before a meeting of NATO foreign ministers to focus on the dispute.

Still, Rice said the United States would continue discussing the system with Russian officials, in an effort to "demystify" it.

50% Good News Is the Bad News in Russian Radio

2007-04-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

MOSCOW, April 21 — At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia’s largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be “positive.” In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin. How would they know what constituted positive news?

“When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive,” said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.” In a darkening media landscape, radio news had been a rare bright spot. Now, the implementation of the “50 percent positive” rule at the Russian News Service leaves an increasingly small number of news outlets that are not managed by the Kremlin, directly or through the state national gas company, Gazprom, a major owner of media assets. The three national television networks are already state controlled, though small-circulation newspapers generally remain independent.

This month alone, a bank loyal to President Vladimir V. Putin tightened its control of an independent television station, Parliament passed a measure banning “extremism” in politics and prosecutors have gone after individuals who post critical comments on Web chat rooms.
Parliament is also considering extending state control to Internet sites that report news, reflecting the growing importance of Web news as the country becomes more affluent and growing numbers of middle-class Russians acquire computers.

On Tuesday, the police raided the Educated Media Foundation, a nongovernmental group sponsored by United States and European donors that helps foster an independent news media. The police carried away documents and computers that were used as servers for the Web sites of similar groups. That brought down a Web site run by the Glasnost Defense Foundation, a media rights group, which published bulletins on violations of press freedoms.

“Russia is dropping off the list of countries that respect press freedoms,” said Boris Timoshenko, a spokesman for the foundation. “We have propaganda, not information.” With this new campaign, seemingly aimed at tying up the loose ends before a parliamentary election in the fall that is being carefully stage-managed by the Kremlin, censorship rules in Russia have reached their most restrictive since the breakup of the Soviet Union, media watchdog groups say.
“This is not the U.S.S.R., when every print or broadcasting outlet was preliminarily censored,” Masha Lipman, a researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said in a telephone interview.
Instead, the tactic has been to impose state ownership on media companies and replace editors with those who are supporters of Mr. Putin — or offer a generally more upbeat report on developments in Russia these days.

The new censorship rules are often passed in vaguely worded measures and decrees that are ostensibly intended to protect the public. Late last year, for example, the prosecutor general and the interior minister appeared before Parliament to ask deputies to draft legislation banning the distribution on the Web of “extremist” content — a catch phrase, critics say, for information about opponents of Mr. Putin.

On Friday, the Federal Security Service, a successor agency to the K.G.B., questioned Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion and opposition politician, for four hours regarding an interview he had given on the Echo of Moscow radio station. Prosecutors have accused Mr. Kasparov of expressing extremist views. Parliament on Wednesday passed a law allowing for prison sentences of as long as three years for “vandalism” motivated by politics or ideology. Once again, vandalism is interpreted broadly, human rights groups say, including acts of civil disobedience. In a test case, Moscow prosecutors are pursuing a criminal case against a political advocate accused of posting critical remarks about a member of Parliament on a Web site, the newspaper Kommersant reported Friday.

State television news, meanwhile, typically offers only bland fare of official meetings. Last weekend, the state channels mostly ignored the violent dispersal of opposition protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Rossiya TV, for example, led its newscast last Saturday with Mr. Putin attending a martial arts competition, with the Belgian actor Jean-Claude Van Damme as his guest. On the streets of the capital that day, 54 people were beaten badly enough by the police that they sought medical care, Human Rights Watch said. Rossiya and Channel One are owned by the state, while NTV was taken from a Kremlin critic in 2001 and now belongs to Gazprom. Last week, a St. Petersburg bank with ties to Mr. Putin increased its ownership stake in REN-TV, a channel that sometimes broadcasts critical reports, raising questions about that outlet’s continued independence.

The Russian News Service is owned by businesses loyal to the Kremlin, including Lukoil, though its exact ownership structure is not public. The owners had not meddled in editorial matters before, said Mikhail G. Baklanov, the former news editor, in a telephone interview. The service provides news updates for a network of music-formatted radio stations, called Russian Radio, with seven million listeners, according to TNS Gallup, a ratings company. Two weeks ago, the shareholders asked for the resignation of Mr. Baklanov. They appointed two new managers, Aleksandr Y. Shkolnik, director of children’s programming on state-owned Channel One, and Svevolod V. Neroznak, an announcer on Channel One. Both retained their positions at state television.

Mr. Shkolnik articulated the rule that 50 percent of the news must be positive, regardless of what cataclysm might befall Russia on any given day, according to the editor who was present at the April 10 meeting. When in doubt about the positive or negative quality of a development, the editor said, “we should ask the new leadership.” “We are having trouble with the positive part, believe me,” the editor said. Mr. Shkolnik did not respond to a request for an interview. In an interview with Kommersant, he denied an on-air ban of opposition figures. He said Mr. Kasparov might be interviewed, but only if he agreed to refrain from extremist statements.
The editor at the news service said that the change had been explained as an effort to attract a larger, younger audience, but that many editorial employees had interpreted it as a tightening of political control ahead of the elections.

The station’s news report on Thursday noted the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Moscow metro. It closed with an upbeat item on how Russian trains are introducing a six-person sleeping compartment, instead of the usual four. Already, listeners are grumbling about the “positive news” policy. “I want fresh morning broadcasts and not to fall asleep,” one listener, who signed a posting on the station’s Web site as Sergei from Vladivostok, complained. “Maybe you’ve tortured RNS’s audience enough? There are just a few of us left. Down with the boring nonintellectual broadcasts!”

The change leaves Echo of Moscow, an irreverent and edgy news station that often provides a forum for opposition voices, as the only independent radio news outlet in Russia with a national reach. And what does Aleksei Venediktov, the editor in chief of Echo of Moscow, think of the latest news from Russia? “For Echo of Moscow, this is positive news,” Mr. Venediktov said. “We are a monopoly now. From the point of view of the country, it is negative news.”

Reporter's Notebook: A New Kremlin Curtain Being Drawn

2007-04-20T09:47:00.000-07:00

By Dana Lewis MOSCOW —

I'm shaking my head at the 20-year-old DHL representative in Moscow. Why, I ask, is she opening an envelope full of office expenses that I am trying to send to New York? Not only is she opening every envelope, but she asks me in an accusatory tone "What's this?"

"This" is a taxi receipt from my recent trip to London for FOX. So now I also want to ask: "What's this?"

After nine years of being posted in Moscow as a correspondent, it's the first time I have had envelopes, which are small and obviously contain only documents, scrutinized. She replies that there are new orders from the FSB (Russian Security Service). "We need to check everything entering or leaving the country."

There seems to be a new paranoia creeping over Russia. Another example: My FOX laptop computer has a hard-drive problem. I try to ship it to New York for maintenance and am told by the courier company that it can't be cleared. "Sorry, the FSB security services need to know there are no secrets on the hard drive."

In an election year in Moscow, it would appear anyone is a spy and everyone needs to be watched, says a U.S. Embassy spokesman. Take for instance the demonstrations held this past weekend by opposition candidates in Moscow and St. Petersburg that drew a couple of thousand people. Hardly a threat to the Kremlin, and yet security forces descended literally on their heads, attacking people with truncheons and either hospitalizing or arresting dozens.

Strolling along the Moscow riverbank in front of the White House, (his old office), former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov appears to be shaken. Kasyanov is also an opposition candidate and narrowly escaped arrest at the weekend demonstrations when several of his bodyguards pushed back the police and were arrested themselves.

"The message is clear," he tells me. "No boundaries, no barriers, no morality. The State is prepared to do everything, anything" to suppress individuals who challenge President Putin's authority.

These are frightening times in Russia. Instead of moving toward democracy and opening up to Europe, some kind of curtain is being drawn — on individual freedoms, on political plurality. A new Iron Curtain? Let's hope not.

"Most Russians travel Europe and read the Internet and know what's happening in the world and want to be part of the world," Kasyanov notes. "We can't turn back the clock now." Those drawing the curtain are largely made up of a former KGB fraternity that includes former KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin. Perhaps they are doing it because they think it's in the state's interest. But more likely, insiders say, they're doing it to protect their base of power from challengers at any cost.

What they need to understand is that a challenge to the way they see Russia doesn't make the challenger an enemy of the state. We all come from modern societies that believe debate and freedom of expression make the state better.

And honestly, about those expenses. Nothing to worry about, unless Moscow taxis start hearing how much London cabbies are getting away with charging their customers.

That would be a shame in Putin's Russia.

Russia Toughens Penalties for Extremism

2007-04-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer

Russian lawmakers on Wednesday endorsed new restrictions on political extremism that will toughen punishments and could make it easier for the Kremlin to apply the rules to its opponents. As parliament's lower house voted, a court considered a request from authorities to label an increasingly vocal opposition group as extremist. The moves follow police crackdowns on opposition demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg and signaled President Vladimir Putin's determination to control dissent in the run-up to parliamentary elections in December and a presidential ballot next March.

The State Duma voted unanimously to allow up to three years' imprisonment for vandalism motivated by politics or ideology. The loose wording of the measure could allow authorities to punish any participants in an opposition protest if violence erupted. Meanwhile, Moscow City Court started considering the chief prosecutor's request to declare the already-banned National Bolshevik Party an extremist organization — a move that would allow officials to increase punishment for its members and could discourage other Kremlin foes from joining it in protests.
The National Bolshevik Party, led by irreverent ultranationalist novelist Eduard Limonov, has played a key role in organizing "Dissenters' Marches," the latest of which were held in Moscow and St. Petersburg over the weekend.

Club-wielding police beat many participants and detained hundreds, drawing wide criticism from human rights groups and some Western governments and reinforcing opposition contentions that Putin's government is strangling democracy ahead of the elections. "Our No. 1 goal is to end trampling on constitutional rights and create institutions that would allow public control over government," said Mikhail Kasyanov, Putin's former prime minister and now a Kremlin critic who took part in Saturday's protest in Moscow. Kasyanov reaffirmed his intention to run for president next March while speaking to reporters Wednesday. Russia's fragmented opposition groups are yet to decide on whether to nominate a single opposition candidate.
Garry Kasparov, one of the organizers of the Other Russia coalition of liberal and leftist forces, to which Kasyanov's party belongs, expressed hope that the opposition could agree on fielding single candidate in the fall.

Kasparov, a former chess world champion who has become a fierce Kremlin critic, hinted that he was unlikely to seek that role. "I believe today this wouldn't help the coalition," he said on Ekho Moskvy radio, adding that he needed to concentrate on coordinating opposition efforts.
A group of opposition politicians and liberal economic experts on Wednesday presented a social program for a future opposition presidential candidate. "It's an attempt to create a basis for a neo-liberal social course," said Irina Khakamada, a Kasyanov ally. The program criticized the Kremlin for failing to turn the nation's soaring oil revenues toward improving health care, social insurance and education. "The state has received huge oil proceeds, but nothing has changed in the social sphere," Khakamada said.

As with most actions by the opposition, the presentation was ignored by state-controlled nationwide television stations that focus on lavish coverage of Kremlin activities.

Russian TV Sanitizes Protest Footage

2007-04-16T14:11:00.000-07:00

By ALEX NICHOLSON, Associated Press Writer

Police beat protesters and arrested hundreds in anti-government demonstrations in Moscow over the weekend, but the version on TV made for dull viewing: police rounding up marchers, and the detained filing calmly into trucks. Meanwhile, networks lavished attention on a pro-Kremlin event featuring throngs of youths in crisp white T-shirts and waving Russian flags. Rossiya TV opened its nightly news with President Vladimir Putin attending a martial arts competition, and when it later showed something of the violence, it insinuated that the protesters were fomenting revolution, backed by the West.

As Russia heads into a parliamentary election in December and presidential elections next March, government influence over the news media appears to be at its strongest since the Soviet era ended. During the coming campaigns, "the distributors of political media are either to be controlled by the state directly, or agents very close to the state," said Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center. The state controls all three major nationwide TV networks. It owns Rossiya and Channel One, while NTV belongs to the national gas monopoly Gazprom, which wrested control of the network from a Kremlin critic in 2000.

Gazprom, majority state-owned, has media assets ranging from the iconic Izvestia broadsheet, where it acquired control in 2005, to the liberal Ekho Moskvy radio station — one of the last major broadcast outlets open to Kremlin critics. A Russian billionaire who serves as president of a Gazprom subsidiary bought a stake in a respected business daily, Kommersant, last year.
"There are still outlets who pursue a very independent line," Lipman said. "But they are at the Kremlin's mercy and they know it. With loyal owners the Kremlin can count on tempering the editorial line when necessary."

Also, such media outlets don't reach a mass audience, but allow the Kremlin to challenge the claim that Russia's media aren't free. REN TV, a national channel that is usually entertainment-oriented, provided the most objective coverage, including footage of protesters being beaten. Lipman said she wondered whether it would stay independent, in light of a report Friday that a St. Petersburg bank with ties to Putin had raised its stake in the network to 70 percent.
After almost a decade of growth, Russia has the beginnings of a broad consumer economy. But Russians still see plenty to demonstrate about. Surveys show that corruption is undiminished, pensioners complain of spiraling costs, and the average wage is just above $400 a month in a country with 53 billionaires — third after the U.S. and Germany, according to Forbes Magazine.
Still, analysts say the media clampdown decreases the chance the protests will gain momentum.
"There is little risk of contagion ... since the Kremlin continues to filter the domestic television news," Rory MacFarquhar of Goldman Sachs said in an e-mail to investors Monday.

Viewers of NTV's main newscast Saturday night might have thought the demonstrators were a few bad apples trying to spoil exhilarating pro-government marches in the early spring sunshine. It segued from a youth movement rally of 10,000 people at Moscow State University to glum, dispirited protesters. No beatings were shown, and police were seen gently escorting protesters onto trucks. Witnesses at the scene, meanwhile, saw young people grabbed with no apparent provocation and manhandled into vehicles.

NTV and Rossiya both seemed to play on Russians' instinctive suspicion of outsiders.
NTV showed Garry Kasparov, the chess champion who has become an opposition leader, shouting from inside a police bus, but the voiceover said "he made comments in English to foreign journalists." Rossiya framed its report on the protests in the context of calls for a revolution in Russia by the self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, and of a U.S. State Department report on democracy and human rights that criticized Russia.

Political activists, police spar in Moscow

2007-04-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

Anti-Kremlin protesters march despite authorities' efforts to prevent them. Hundreds are detained, including organizer Garry Kasparov

By David HolleyTimes Staff

For beleaguered but feisty anti-Kremlin activists of various political stripes, today was a day of drama and high tension, as young radicals and fed-up pensioners alike used a protest march and rally to taunt authorities.The demonstrators succeeded in provoking the government to bare its teeth, with police arresting hundreds and trying to intimidate journalists. The day was not without humor, however. After police detained one of the protest organizers, Garry Kasparov, a former world chess champion turned democratic activist, a rally speaker declared wryly that Kasparov was "playing chess" with the authorities. Kasparov and his disparate allies, including a former prime minister and a writer who heads a radical youth group, share the goal of keeping protest alive in a country where Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's government asserts ever-greater centralized control.Putin enjoys more than 70% support ratings, and many critics question why, given that popularity, his government appears intent on stifling even weak opposition. A maximum of 3,000 people made any attempt to protest in Moscow today, while authorities called out 9,000 officers to keep control.

Some opposition activists argue that the response is proof that Putin's circle is neither so powerful nor monolithic as it seems.In recent months, Kasparov and his associates, along with London-based tycoon Boris Berezovsky, a onetime political insider turned fierce Putin critic, have outlined similar visions of how greater democracy might come to Russia. Under their scenario, street protests keep the spark of dissent alive, and at some point the seemingly solid Kremlin power structure splits, and one faction goes over to the opposition. That is when true political competition and greater hopes for real democracy could take hold, they say.Although the foreign-based and Moscow-based critics appear to be working in parallel, Kasparov's group has distanced itself from Berezovsky, who has implied that he is giving financial support to secret opponents of Putin within the Kremlin inner circle.Kasparov's group, Other Russia, originally announced plans to hold a "Dissenters' March" and rally today centered on Pushkin Square, the Russian capital's premier spot for such events. But they were denied permission after a pro-Kremlin youth group was given a rally permit for the same time and place.City authorities offered Other Russia use of a park in the Chistye Prudy area for their rally but said no march would be allowed because of the disruption it would cause.Other Russia accepted the approved rally site but told supporters to gather informally near Pushkin Square and then walk the roughly one-mile distance to Chistye Prudy.The pro-Kremlin youth group, which had said openly that it obtained the permit in order to deny Pushkin Square to Other Russia, did not hold any event there, and by late morning the square was simply cordoned off by police.Thus was the chessboard set. Kasparov and some other activists were detained near Pushkin Square almost upon their arrival and were placed on a police bus. As he was being driven off, Kasparov managed to shout out an open window, "This regime is criminal. This is a police state. They arrest people everywhere."

His lawyer later said Kasparov had been charged with "shouting anti-government slogans in the presence of a large group of people," the Russian news agency Interfax reported.He was released late in the evening after being fined $39 for violation of public order. Around the same time that Kasparov was arrested, other protesters began approaching the police who had cordoned off Pushkin Square."Why are you not allowing people to get together and hold rallies as the constitution provides?" one man, who later identified himself as Yevgeny Shimenkov, 67, said to an officer."The constitution is for you. For us, there are orders of our commander," the policeman replied."You must know your orders are criminal. Your commander is a criminal and you are his accomplices," Shimenkov said."Get out of here, old man, before I arrest you," the policeman retorted.After about 30 minutes, police began to press protesters farther away from the square; and suddenly many people who had gathered in the area, some appearing to be simply bystanders, began walking toward the park at Chistye Prudy.

Soon there was a column of nearly 1,000 people snaking along the sidewalk and spilling into the street, in effect conducting the unauthorized Dissenters' March.Some youthful members of the National Bolshevik Party, a banned radical youth group that specializes in theatrical anti-Kremlin protests, unfurled their hammer-and-sickle flag and lighted flares. The group is headed by Eduard Limonov, a writer criticized by some for having a nondemocratic ideology. Kasparov and former Prime Minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov have claimed their alliance with him is justified by a need to unite all anti-Kremlin forces to keep hope for democracy alive.

When the crowd had walked about half a mile, hundreds of riot police moved in, particularly going after young people and those with flags or banners, grabbing them roughly and putting them on police buses. People with cameras were also targets, although journalists who could produce accreditation cards were usually released on the spot. Some middle-aged and elderly protesters also were detained.Reuters news agency reported that four of its journalists — two photographers and two camera crew — were detained as they covered the protest. They were later released without being charged, it said.

Police said they detained about 250 demonstrators, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.About 1,000 protesters eventually gathered at the approved site to hear speeches, including one by Kasyanov, who served during Putin's first presidential term but joined the opposition after being dismissed from office three years ago."There are no free elections. There is no respect for people," said Kasyanov, a potential opposition presidential candidate in balloting next year, when the constitution requires that Putin step down."The authorities are afraid of free people. They're not afraid of slaves and obedient people. But they're afraid of you."

Chess star squares up to Putin

2007-04-13T05:33:00.000-07:00

By James Rodgers BBC News, Moscow

Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov sees his campaign to change Russia as a mission to safeguard constitutional rights. "It's a very important battle," he told the BBC, at the end of a news conference which he and his political allies had called to outline their plans for a protest on Saturday. He has assembled a bewilderingly broad coalition. It includes former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and the extremist National Bolshevik Party. The NBP has become known for audacious stunts aimed at embarrassing the establishment. Nevertheless, their flag borrows heavily from Nazi imagery - a hammer and sickle replaces the swastika. They hardly seem likely partners for Western-style democrats. I put it to Garry Kasparov that his coalition, called

"Another Russia", simply lacks popular support.

"At a time when the government controls mass media, and the election process is turned into a mockery, I think to talk about public support is probably useless," he insisted.

Street politics

For now, the campaign ground is the streets. The numbers are small. A similar rally in Moscow in December drew only 3-4,000 people. The marchers were outnumbered by helmeted and heavily booted riot police. Moscow's political establishment is dismissive. "It's a coalition of the losers," Vyacheslav Nikonov, an analyst with close ties to the Kremlin, told me. He argues that Another Russia will never progress from street protest to parliament - the Duma. "Their overall electoral strength is about half a per cent. Russia has a proportional system of elections, and in order to get into the State Duma, they need to get more than seven per cent. There is no way they can get close to that."

One of the frequent complaints made by Another Russia is that they are denied access to the media. Television is by far the most influential news medium in the world's biggest country. All the main channels are controlled by the state, or businesses close to the administration.
A quick glance at Another Russia's own newspaper shows how wide they are casting their net. They call on liberals, communists, nationalists, and people who are not interested in politics, to join them. The next column is headed "Where's the revolution?"

New affluence

The fact is that many Russians have had enough of upheaval and change. For them, the revolution already has come. Its latest phase - in a Russia rolling in mineral wealth - has made them richer. They are happy. You do not get the sense that there is a massive yearning for more radical reforms. But not everyone is a winner. With elections ahead, the authorities seem to want no element of risk. The massive police presence at previous marches bears witness to that. There are also many stories of activists from other regions of Russia being prevented from travelling to Moscow. Before the December demonstration, the offices of Mr Kasparov's organisation were raided.

Masha Lipman of the Moscow Carnegie Centre senses that the Kremlin is nervous.
"Political street activism is in theory unpredictable," she notes. "Nobody knows when it might evolve into something bigger. After all, what happened in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution was totally unexpected. The Kremlin today wants double, and triple, and quadruple protection. They don't want to take chances." Mr Kasparov accepts that this is one game he does not control. "If you look at this as a chess game, I'm not the player, I'm the piece: a very important piece, maybe one of the most important pieces, but still one of many. And we have to win the game." His fellow pieces have come from both flanks of Russian politics. That could frustrate strategy. For now, the former champion's latest gambit does not look strong enough to force the Kremlin onto the defensive - but they are keeping a close eye on his moves.

'I am plotting a new Russian revolution'

2007-04-12T18:02:00.000-07:00

London exile Berezovsky says force necessary to bring down President Putin in Moscow

Friday April 13, 2007

The Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has told the Guardian he is plotting the violent overthrow of President Putin from his base in Britain after forging close contacts with members of Russia's ruling elite.

In comments which appear calculated to enrage the Kremlin, and which will further inflame relations between London and Moscow, the multimillionaire claimed he was already bankrolling people close to the president who are conspiring to mount a palace coup. "We need to use force to change this regime," he said. "It isn't possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure." Asked if he was effectively fomenting a revolution, he said: "You are absolutely correct."

Although Mr Berezovsky, with an estimated fortune of £850m, may have the means to finance such a plot, and although he enjoyed enormous political influence in Russia before being forced into exile, he said he could not provide details to back up his claims because the information was too sensitive. Last night the Kremlin denounced Mr Berezovsky's comments as a criminal offence which it believed should undermine his refugee status in the UK.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin's chief spokesman, said: "In accordance with our legislation [his remarks are] being treated as a crime. It will cause some questions from the British authorities to Mr Berezovsky. We want to believe that official London will never grant asylum to someone who wants to use force to change the regime in Russia." It will not be the first time the British government has faced accusations from the Kremlin that it is providing a safe haven for Mr Berezovsky. When he told a Moscow radio station last year that he wanted to see Mr Putin overthrown by force, Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, told the Commons that "advocating the violent overthrow of a sovereign state is unacceptable" and warned the tycoon he could be stripped of his refugee status.
Russian authorities subsequently sent an extradition request to London. That failed, however, when a district judge ruled Mr Berezovsky could not be extradited as long as he has asylum status.

In an interview with the Guardian, however, Mr Berezovsky goes much further than before, claiming to be in close contact with members of Russia's political elite who, he says, share his view that Mr Putin is damaging Russia by rolling back democratic reforms, smothering opposition, centralising power and flouting the country's constitution. "There is no chance of regime change through democratic elections," he says. "If one part of the political elite disagrees with another part of the political elite - that is the only way in Russia to change the regime. I try to move that."

While declining to describe these contacts - and alleging that they would be murdered if they were identified - he maintained that he was offering his "experience and ideology" to members of the country's political elite, as well as "my understanding of how it could be done". He added: "There are also practical steps which I am doing now, and mostly it is financial."
Mr Berezovsky said he was unconcerned by any threat to strip him of his refugee status. "Straw wasn't in a position to take that decision. A judge in court said it wasn't in the jurisdiction of Straw." He added that there was even less chance of such a decision being taken following the polonium-210 poisoning last November of his former employee, Alexander Litvinenko. "Today the reality is different because of the Litvinenko case." Mr Berezovsky, 61, a former mathematician, turned to business during the Yeltsin years and made his fortune by capturing state assets at knockdown prices during Russia's rush towards privatisation.

Although he played a key role in ensuring Mr Putin's victory in the 2000 presidential elections, the two men fell out as the newly elected leader successfully wrested control of Russia back from the so-called oligarchy, the small group of tycoons who had come to dominate the country's economy. A few months after the election Mr Berezovsky fled Russia, and applied successfully for asylum in the UK after Mr Litvinenko, an officer with the KGB's successor, the FSB, came forward to say he had been ordered to murder the tycoon.

Mr Berezovsky changed his name to Platon Elenin, Platon being the name of a character in a Russian film based loosely upon his life. He was subsequently given a British passport in this name. As well as claiming to be financing and encouraging coup plotters in Moscow, Mr Berezovsky said he had dedicated much of the last six years to "trying to destroy the positive image of Putin" that many in the west held, portraying him whenever possible as a dangerously anti-democratic figure. He said he had also opposed the Russian president through Kommersant, the influential Russian newspaper which he controlled until last year.

Last month Mr Berezovsky was questioned by two detectives from the Russian prosecutor general's office who were in London to investigate the death of Mr Litvinenko. He has denied claims that he refused to answer many of their questions.

Last night the Kremlin said Russian authorities might want to question him again in the light of his interview with the Guardian. "I now believe our prosecutor general's office has got lots of questions for Mr Berezovsky," said Mr Peskov. He added: "His words are very interesting. This is a very sensitive issue."

The Foreign Office said it had nothing to add to Mr Straw's comments of last year.

Back to the Future with Putin

2007-04-12T04:46:00.000-07:00

The first of three reports looking at the changing political map of Russia and how it is using its growing financial muscle both at home and abroad.

Today: the president's return to the era of authoritarianism

After four years as a member of St Petersburg's legislative assembly, Sergei Gulyaev is packing up. Boxes, files and a 2007 calendar showing him in a moody leather jacket - all were being carted out of his office. Last month Mr Gulyaev failed to win re-election to the city's assembly. The vote, in 14 regions across Russia, was a rehearsal for December's parliamentary elections - and for next year's all-important presidential poll.

But the end of Mr Gulyaev's political career had little to do with the voters. Last December he and two colleagues voted against a decision by Vladimir Putin to reappoint a staunch loyalist as St Petersburg's governor. Forty-seven other deputies voted in favour. The Kremlin's revenge was swift. Before the election, the city's electoral commission kicked Mr Gulyaev and his liberal Yabloko party off the ballot paper. Despite all evidence to the contrary, it claimed 34 signatures on an election petition had been forged.

Liberal voters in St Petersburg were left with nobody to vote for. To no one's great surprise, Russia's two pro-Kremlin parties came first and second, leaving the new assembly without dissenting voices. "The decision to stop us standing was revenge for our position," Mr Gulyaev told the Guardian. Peering from his office window on to one of St Petersburg's most beautiful squares, he added: "There is no democracy in Russia. There is de jure democracy. But in reality it doesn't exist."

Seven years after ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin took over as president from an enfeebled Boris Yeltsin, Russia has gone back, critics say, to the classic authoritarian model of the state that flourished under the tsarists and the communists.

The accidental anarchy of the Yeltsin era - when TV stations were free to portray the country's leader as an occasional drunk - has disappeared. Instead, Mr Putin has clinically restored the old system of Russian authoritarianism. In this new era, critics of the president mysteriously fail to appear on television; courts eagerly anticipate the Kremlin's wishes; the killers of troublesome journalists are rarely, if ever, caught.

Russia's tiny opposition compares Putin's Russia to Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union in the mid-1970s, another golden economic period characterised by high oil prices and a strongly "personalist" regime. "Of course we can always find some differences with Soviet times, the Brezhnev time, or the tsarist times. But on the whole what has happened in Russia is a classic restoration of authoritarianism," Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of handful of independent MPs left in Russia's duma, or parliament, said.

Speaking in a cafe near the duma's modern offices, he added: "It's a restoration in several aspects. It's a restoration of the traditional Russian model of the state, society and political system, and of rhetoric in Russian-western relations." Like Sergei Gulyaev, Mr Ryzhkov's political career is almost over. Two weeks ago Russia's supreme court liquidated his Republican party on the grounds that it had too few members. The party had violated electoral law, the commission said.

The ruling follows numerous changes by the Kremlin to Russia's electoral system. Previously, Mr Putin abolished elections for provincial governors - he now appoints them. He also imposed Moscow's control over local budgets. Under the latest rules of the game, political parties must have 50,000 members and be represented in half of Russia's provinces.

Additionally, Russia's old mixed constituency and list system has been replaced by a list-only system, making it impossible for popular independent local candidates to stand again as MPs. The hurdle for parties to win seats in the duma has gone up from 5 to 7% of the overall national vote. With fewer Russians voting, the minimum 25% turnout rule has disappeared. Moreover, the Kremlin has invented a social democrat-style "opposition" party called A Just Russia, which competes for votes against Mr Putin's ruling United Russia party. But like United Russia, A Just Russia patriotically supports the president, while maintaining the illusion of democratic rivalry. It also takes away votes from the communists and nationalists.

Kremlin political theorists describe this form of virtual politics as "managed democracy". Mr Ryzhkov, meanwhile, says he lugged five boxes into court proving his liberal party had 58,000 members. The court ignored this evidence, he says. The sum effect of these changes will be to kill off Russia's few genuinely independent political actors, critics suggest. Even before anyone has gone to the polls the shape of the next duma is widely known. It will be made up of four parties: United Russia, A Just Russia, the ultra-nationalists and the communists. "Either you are part of the game, or part of the pseudo-opposition, where you co-operate with the Kremlin guys and never touch Putin. Or you can't participate in politics," Mr Ryzhkov says. His assessment of Putin's Russia is bleak. "Almost all the results of perestroika and democratisation have been killed," he says.

But there are growing signs that the Kremlin's attempts to micro-manage the elections and ensure the smooth transition of power from Mr Putin to an as yet unknown successor picked by the Kremlin are not going quite as well as they might. The trouble started in St Petersburg, Mr Putin's backyard and where he grew up. Last month Mr Gulyaev led 5,000 demonstrators through Nevsky Prospekt, St Petersburg's central boulevard. The avenue finishes at the Neva river and the Hermitage museum, the tsar's former palace and the scene of an uprising by another angry group, the Bolsheviks, in 1917.

The protesters included representatives from all Russia's main opposition parties, Yabloka, Garry Kasparov's United Civil Front, the National Bolsheviks, and the Popular Democratic Union. But they also included hundreds of locals, fed up with rising prices, corruption and the lack of real electoral choice. Demonstrators were also unhappy about plans to construct a giant tower for the state-owned energy firm Gazprom in St Petersburg. It was the largest anti-Putin demonstration ever. The demonstrators blocked traffic for two hours and police arrested 113 people. The size of the demonstration appears to have surprised and rattled the Kremlin. Last month authorities in Nizhny Novgorod crushed a similar demonstration, detaining dozens of activists before they had even had a chance to assemble in the city's Gorky Square.

Next week further anti-Kremlin demonstrations are planned in Moscow and St Petersburg. This month opposition leaders will also meet to agree a unified anti-Kremlin candidate to stand in the presidential election in March 2008. Russia's state-run television channels have reported none of this. Since 2001, the Kremlin has enjoyed a monopoly on state-run television, the main source of information about society for 85% of Russians. The situation in the print media is mixed. While most publications take a pro-Kremlin line, Russia has four relatively independent newspapers, including Kommersant and the respected business daily Vedomosti. There is also a liberal radio station Echo Moscow. Collectively, however, these reach only a tiny audience.

The government, meanwhile, dismisses western accusations that Russia is backsliding on democracy as a "misperception". Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin's chief press spokesman told the Guardian: "We are convinced this is wrong. Russia has come a tremendous way in 15 years from a one-party totalitarian regime to a multi-party democracy with free elections, and a free press."

He dismissed the idea that Yabloko's failure to take part in the elections in St Petersburg was due to sinister government forces. "It wasn't a plot by the Kremlin. There are laws in this country. You have to perform certain formalities to participate in elections. They failed to do that." The authorities had taken a tough line on recent pro-democracy marches because of the "threat of extremism," he added.

Most political observers believe the Kremlin regime is impregnable, especially when world gas and oil prices remain high. They also point out that Mr Putin enjoys broad support. "One fact about the contemporary Russian situation is that the majority or a plurality of the population supports the current president. The majority isn't very much. But 55-57-58% express their trust in Putin personally," says Dr Grigorii Golosov, Russia's leading election expert, and a professor of politics at St Petersburg's European University. "But judging from recent elections only 31% of the population is prepared to vote for United Russia. Plurality support is definitely there."

Nobody really believes that St Petersburg, the scene of uprisings in 1905 and 1917, is on the brink of another one. "We don't want a revolution," Sergei Gulyaev says. "We merely want free political debate in the media and the guarantee of participation in the elections. These are fundamental things."

U.S. report on democracy, human rights in Russia politicized-FM

2007-04-11T04:45:00.001-07:00

MOSCOW, April 11 (RIA Novosti) - A U.S. State Department report on democratic processes and human rights protection in the world contains an arbitrary and politicized provision regarding Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
The report "Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The U.S. Record 2006", published last Thursday by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, blasted democratic processes in Russia and the current situation with non-governmental organizations and human rights protection in Russia.

"The report is obviously politicized in its nature and fails to reflect the real state of affairs," the ministry said in a statement adding that the U.S. State Department published similar reports before the 'color revolutions' in former Soviet republics. The U.S. report said in particular, "Continuing centralization of power in the executive branch, a compliant State Duma, political pressure on the judiciary, corruption and selectivity in enforcement of the law, continuing media restrictions and self-censorship, and government pressure on opposition political parties eroded the public accountability of government leaders."

The Russian government has faced criticism from Western leaders for restrictions imposed on rights groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in the country, and the issue is often cited as an example of Russia's alleged backsliding on democracy. "A whole range of simple logical tricks was used in the document regarding Russia... in order to convince American taxpayers and public opinion that Russia was in urgent need of democratization," the Russian ministry said.

The report also said in particular that if it was not for the United States and its embassy in Russia, which supported various NGOs and democratic initiatives, the political and social situation would have deteriorated much further in the country. "With U.S. support, NGOs continued to monitor the work of deputies in regional legislatures, encouraging interaction between constituents and their elected officials and promoting good governance. Sixteen U.S.-supported coalitions of business associations united more than 170 associations nationwide; these groups won at least 30 legislative changes in various regions of the country. The ambassador met with the head of the Central Election Commission and with political party leaders, including opposition leaders, throughout the year to emphasize the need for transparent and fair elections," the report said.

In light of this statement from the report, Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the International Affairs Committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said Monday that the report was an unwarranted interference in Russia's internal affairs adding that "It contains a direct indication that the United States intends to finance projects within the framework of the forthcoming State Duma and presidential election campaigns." Commenting on the report further, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Russia is open to detailed and constructive dialogue with all countries, including the United States. But Russia believes it unacceptable to use monitoring of democratic ideas and human rights as a cover for interference in other countries' internal affairs, including through U.S. diplomatic representations abroad, the ministry added.

U.S. plans to interfere in Russia's elections unacceptable - Kosachyov

2007-04-10T05:00:00.000-07:00

MOSCOW. April 10 (Interfax) - U.S. plans to get involved in Russia's election process is an explicit instance of interference in Russia's internal affairs, State Duma International Affairs Committee chairman Konstantin Kosachyov said.

"I am amazed by the U.S. State Department's report. The masks are off. The report directly indicates that the U.S. will fund projects under the upcoming parliamentary and presidential election campaigns in Russia," Kosachyov said, commenting on the U.S. State Department's 2006 annual report on human rights and democracy.

"This is an instance of direct interference in a country's internal political life and sovereign affairs, which we cannot accept in any flavor or under any circumstances," Kosachyov said.

Russia Pushes for Agreement over Gas Cartel along OPEC Lines

2007-04-08T19:53:00.000-07:00

Top officials in Europe and America are watching nervously to see whether Russia succeeds in forging an Opec-style "gas cartel" at gathering of the world's leading gas exporters in Qatar today.

Algeria, Iran and Venezuela all appear to back Putin's bid for a 'gas cartel' The once-sleepy Gas Exporting Countries Forum has become the stage for a dramatic bid by Russian President Vladimir Putin to dominate the global energy agenda. The EU energy commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, warned that Europe will retaliate against any attempt to rig the market or hold European consumers to ransom." Gas could be replaced. If gas is not traded in open markets, I would advise all member states and I will do everything I can to make more investment in nuclear power," he said.

In Washington, the top Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, described the proposed cartel as a "global extortion racket".

Qatar's foreign minister, Mohammed al-Roumaihi, left no doubt that the proposal was a Kremlin scheme. " The idea of a gas Opec is above all political. It was suggested by President Putin, whose country has specific strategic objectives," he said. Russia's energy minister, Victor Khristenko, insisted the world had nothing to fear from moves to streamline rules in the gas market.

"I know this is causing a lot of tension, sometimes exaggerated, sometimes wild. Are we going to sign up to a gas price policy? Of course not," he said. Leonid Grigoriev, president of Russia's Energy Institute, said Mr Putin was stoking fears as part of bargaining strategy in gas export deals. "

These references to a cartel are made deliberately. They are expected to frighten the West, and they do," he said.

It is unclear how a gas cartel would function given that most contracts are taken out on very long delivery schedules of 15 years or more, unlike the liquid spot market for crude.
Algeria, Iran and Venezuela all appear to back Mr Putin's ideas for a "gas Opec", but the scheme would lack bite without the full support of pro-Western Qatar.

Putin still opposed to third term

2007-03-30T04:52:00.000-07:00

6 MOSCOW, March 30 (RIA Novosti) - Vladimir Putin has not changed his position on a possible third presidential term and has no intention of running again, the Kremlin press service said Friday.

"The Russian president has repeatedly commented on the issue, and his position remains unchanged," the presidential press service said in response to a proposal voiced by Sergei Mironov, speaker of parliament's upper house, Friday to extend the presidential mandate to five-seven years and add a third term. "I propose you consider amending the relevant constitutional provisions," Mironov told the upper house, which approved him as speaker earlier Friday.

Mironov said he proposed that local legislatures across Russia discuss the issue in April and May, with the president himself making the final decision. Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of Russia's lower house, said Friday that he disagreed with Mironov's proposal "I do not support statements about amending the Constitution," Gryzlov said. "United Russia, which holds the majority in the Duma, will guard the Constitution's inviolability."

The prospect of President Vladimir Putin remaining in power for a third presidential term when his current term runs out in 2008 has been widely debated in Russia, although the president himself has repeatedly said he will not run again. Speaking at his annual televised question-and-answer session in October 2006, Vladimir Putin said: "I think I will manage to maintain the most important thing for a politician - your trust. And, using this, together we can influence life in our country."

Transfer of Power in Russia: Authoritarian or Democratic?

2007-03-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

By Peter Fedynsky Washington, D.C.29 March 2007

Russia holds a presidential election in less than a year. If the nominating process, campaign and vote are transparent and fair, Russians will witness an unprecedented democratic transfer of power. But some political analysts are concerned this will not happen, and that instead incumbent president Vladimir Putin will find a way to remain in office despite a constitutional prohibition against a third term.

Vladimir Putin came to power as acting president in 1999, when his predecessor Boris Yeltsin suddenly resigned. Mr. Yeltsin expressed confidence at the time that Russia would develop as a democratic nation. At a recent Moscow news conference, Mr. Putin assured skeptics that the 2008 presidential election would indeed be democratic.

"We shouldn't fuss about future elections, but as I already said they provide an opportunity for objective choice. We should provide free democratic choice,” Mr. Putin said. “I am also a citizen of the Russian Federation, and I'm proud of that. I reserve the right to express my preference [for the next president], but this will be done only in the pre-election period."

Political observers say the current favorites are First Deputy Premiers Sergei Ivanov and Dmitry Medvedev. Some, however, would like to see the popular Mr. Putin remain in office, despite a constitutional prohibition against a third term.

"We should have had a president like this a long time ago," said a Moscow pensioner who identified himself as Yuri. "Maybe [Putin] will run again, and if not then we will have a worthy successor who will continue Putin's work."

David Satter, Hudson Institute"It would in no way be surprising for a way to be found for Putin to extend his period in office," said David Satter, a Russian expert at a Washington, D.C., think tank. Satter, from the Hudson Institute, notes that a constitutional ban did not prevent the Kremlin leader from appointing the country's governors.

"A judicial branch of government in the hands of the presidential administration confirmed what was obviously contradicted by the letter of the constitutional provision for the election of governors,” he said.

The direct appointment of governors is but one aspect of what is called a vertical, or highly centralized, power structure in Russia. But some analysts speculate that Mr. Putin could be introducing his country's ruling elite to a degree of decentralization. Lilya Shevtsova, of the Carnegie Moscow Center, spoke at a recent Russia conference at the Hudson Institute.
Lilya Shevtsova of the Carnegie Moscow Center"He is great at the mechanism of 'horizontality' – where all people, all groups, all institutions will balance each other: [the] Duma is being balanced by the Council of Federation; United Russia by Just Russia; Medvedev by Sergei Ivanov; and all people, representatives of power structures, the siloviki, they are balancing each other," she says. Shevtsova cautions, however, that the balancing act could backfire after the election, leading to a harsher, more authoritarian regime.

Recent Kremlin crackdowns on independent media and political parties, as well as non-governmental organizations, are viewed abroad as moves toward authoritarianism.
Former U.S. National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski says he is troubled by that, and warns that the Russian presidential election is likely to be managed by the state. "I hate to say this, but I think to some extent that's a step towards the eventual institutionalization of democracy. It will take time,” Brzeninski said. “But if Putin doesn't run again, that in itself is a step forward. One has to acknowledge that, even if the process of selecting his successor is not going to be generally democratic."

The Russian presidential election is set for 9 March 2008. An actual transfer of power is scheduled to take place about two months later.