Meeting in Ankara, Russian PM Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan have come to agreement over the South Stream pipeline. It regards Moscow’s request to route its gas pipeline through Turkey’s territorial waters, RFE/RL reports.
Posts Tagged ‘Vladimir Putin’
Putin on another “shirtless vacation”
August 6th, 2009 |
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Two years after he first bared his chest for photographers during a holiday, Russian PM Vladimir Putin was back in the remote Tuva region of Siberia. According to news agency reports and a set of RIA Novosti photographs, he also once again stripped his military-style clothes down to the waist.
Now action man Putin dives world’s deepest lake
August 1st, 2009 |
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Vladimir Putin has dived to the bottom of the world’s deepest lake in Siberia, aboard a mini-submarine.
The Russian prime minister descended 1,400m (4,600ft) in a four-and-a-half hour mission to inspect crystals containing natural gas.
Mr Putin said it was a very special feeling and he had not seen anything like it before.
The mission is likely to add to the 56-year-old’s carefully cultivated image as a man of action.
However, as he emerged after the dive, Mr Putin quickly played down reporters’ suggestions that his next challenge would be to travel in space.
"There is enough work on earth," he said.
‘Plankton soup’
Lake Baikal in Siberia is a UN world heritage site. The largely untouched lake bed contains deposits of clathrate hydrate – crystals packed with natural gas.
Experts say the reserves of methane could rival some of the largest deposits in the world, although mineral extraction is banned.
"What I saw impressed me," the Russian leader said. "With my own eyes I could see how Baikal is, in all its grandeur, in all its greatness.
But Mr Putin expressed some surprise at how murky the water was. And while he realised it was clean from an "ecological point of view", he described it more as a "plankton soup".
Mr Putin arrived for his dive a day after clipping a satellite transmitter onto a Beluga whale on Chkalov island in Russia’s far east.
These acts are the latest in a series that have helped create something of a macho image for the former KGB spy.
While president, Mr Putin was famously photographed on holiday angling, stripped to the waist and wearing a pair of combat trousers.
As well as being a judo black belt, he has also taken to the sky in a fighter jet, shot a Siberian tiger with a tranquilliser gun, and been pictured astride a Mongolian horse. </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Tainted history
July 24th, 2009 |
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By James Rodgers
BBC News
What is worrying Russia Why is the country convinced that it is the victim of a campaign to make it look bad
President Dmitry Medvedev recently announced the setting up of a commission to counter the falsification of history. He said this was becoming increasingly "severe, evil, and aggressive".
"This is absolute poppycock," says Robert Service, professor of Russian History at Oxford University. "History is all about argument. There is no absolute historical truth about anything big in history."
Mr Service dismisses the Russian leader’s suggestion that his country is facing some kind of academic aggression.
Instead, he sees a desire to dominate, worthy of the most repressive totalitarian regimes of fiction.
"President Medvedev, following in the path of his predecessor President [Vladimir] Putin, wants to control history," he says.
"And he wants to control history as a means of controlling the present. This is the classic George Orwell scenario."
‘Hysterical reaction’
Many Russians, though, agree with their president.
Natalia Narochnitskaya, a former deputy in the Russian parliament and now a member of the new Historical Truth Commission, says that she is surprised by what she terms the "almost hysterical reaction" in the West.
"In the Western media especially, there is a certain prejudice against Russia and Russian history," she says.
"They always feel that Russia since, you know, Ivan the Terrible, is a certain country which is off the European civilisation."
"In August there will be such a yelling about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, saying that that was the step that led to the Second World War"
Natalia Narochnitskaya, member of the Historical Truth Commission
Ask a few more questions, though, and these two apparently separate views begin to converge.
At least, they agree on what the key issue is – World War II. And here lies the clue as to the real reason for the establishment of the new commission.
This is what appears to anger today’s Russian historical establishment: accounts of Red Army crimes on the march to Berlin; assertions by the Baltic countries and others in Eastern Europe that Soviet forces came as occupiers as much as liberators; any suggestion that Stalin’s Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were anything but complete opposites and bitter enemies.
Here, perhaps, there is a clue as to the timing of the commission’s founding.
Next month sees the 70th anniversary of the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Hitler’s Germany, something Ms Narochnitskaya expects the West to make a lot of noise about.
"In August there will be such a yelling about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, saying that that was the step that led to the Second World War, and that Germany and the Soviet Union were two equal, disgusting, totalitarian monsters."
Nationalist sentiment
Why does this matter today Do these arguments have any great importance beyond the walls of universities In Russia, the answer is yes.
"So many people are speaking about strong, Orthodox Russia, military power… The commission is partly a response to this atmosphere"
Tamara Eidelman
Moscow history teacher
The country sees its victory over Hitler’s forces as the greatest moment of the 20th Century.
The war is sometimes discussed in the news media as if it were a recent event, not increasingly distant history.
Any attempt to tarnish the glory of that triumph is seen as a deliberate attempt to make Russia look bad.
Russia’s past haunts its present. Recognising that, the authorities want to rule the version of the past which dominates today.
Tamara Eidelman, who teaches history at a Moscow High School, feels surrounded by nationalist sentiment.
"So many people are speaking about strong, Orthodox Russia, military power," she says.
"It is something that is very strong in historical tradition and in popular opinion. This commission is partly a response to this atmosphere."
The creation of this commission seems to go to the heart of what troubles modern Russia.
The chaos which followed the collapse of communism left many Russians deeply distrustful of politics and officialdom.
President Medvedev has complained of the corruption and "legal nihilism" which plague his country.
Russia’s leaders today know that they need this shining, sacred, memory of victory to give their people something to believe in.
In the near future, it may even be backed up in law.
The Russian parliament is on its summer break at the moment, but legislation is being considered – legislation that would make it a criminal offence to "infringe on historical memory in relation to events which took place in the Second World War".
James Rodgers was formerly the BBC’s Moscow correspondent.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Here today, gone by 2010
July 24th, 2009 |
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Russia reserve fund is emptying fast
Russia’s reserve fund, built up over several years thanks to high oil prices, will shrink to US$52bn in the third quarter of this year from a peak of US$137bn in March, and is expected to be empty by the end of 2010 as transfers are required to plug the yawning gap between government revenue and spending. Assuming that by 2011 the global economy is growing robustly once more, the reserve fund will have done its job. If not, Russia’s government, which has hiked spending sharply in recent years, is likely to return to the international debt markets—and this could change the political realities in which the country’s rulers operate.
Russia’s government will transfer Rb1.36trn (US$43.7bn) from its reserve fund to the state budget during the third quarter of this year, the government announced on July 22nd after Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, had signed a decree to approve the measure. As a result, the reserve fund will have just Rb1.6trn by the start of October, compared with a peak balance of nearly Rb4.9trn in March. …
Escort’s tapes ‘reveal night with Berlusconi’
July 21st, 2009 |
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• Spotlight back on private life after L’Aquila summit
• Tapes claim Italian PM sought menage-a-trois
If Silvio Berlusconi thought he’d shaken off the furore over his alleged use of escort girls, he was in for a nasty surprise today.
The Italian prime minister has successfully deflected and sidestepped lurid allegations about his supposed liaisons in recent weeks, helped by some timely international summitry which let him demonstrate his statesmanship, not to mention his commitment to dealing with the aftermath of the L’Aquila earthquake.
But today it was all about call girls, giant beds and the suggestion of a menage-a-trois, after a left-leaning news magazine, L’Espresso, posted “pillow talk” recordings that an escort said she made during a night with the septuagenarian Italian leader.
The escort, Patrizia D’Addario, claims the tapes relate to the night of 4 November last year, when the leaders of the world were holding their breath, waiting to see if Americans would elect their first black president.
Berlusconi, apparently, had other things on his mind.
According to D’Addario, Berlusconi was entertaining her in the bedroom of his magnificent Rome residence, Palazzo Grazioli. In one fragment of conversation, Berlusconi appears to direct D’Addario to wait for him in bed while he showers. In another conversation, recorded the next day, she protests to Giampaolo Tarantini, the businessman who allegedly set her up with the Italian prime minister, that she had not received the €5,000 (£4,300) she was expecting.
In a third snippet, it is claimed she confides to the same intermediary that Berlusconi asked her whether next time they met she would agree to a menage-a-trois with another of his girlfriends.
“He said that he has a girlfriend and would like to have me lick this girlfriend,” D’Addario says, according to the posted recordings.
The Berlusconi camp moved quickly to rubbish the tapes. Berlusconi’s spokesman said: “This seesaw of gossip is not getting anywhere”. A spokesman for his party, the Freedom People, called the release of the recordings “pathetic”. An attorney, Niccolo Ghedini, said they were “without any merit, completely improbable and the fruit of invention”.
The content of the conversations was reported in broad terms last month, but the words themselves, some pronounced in what sound like the distinctively nasal tones of Italy’s prime minister, are likely to have an effect no news report can rival.
One of the conversations appears to back claims that Italy’s leader has a giant bed with a connection, as yet unclear, to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
After an exchange in which the prime minister seems to be offering a present to D’Addario, he says to her: “I’m taking a shower.” He then asks her to wait on the big bed. She asks which one. He replies: “Putin’s”.
The tapes also include ammunition for Berlusconi’s supporters, however. He has said that he has never paid for sex, and insisted that he was unaware the women who attended his parties were being rewarded. In the telephone call with Tarantini, D’Addario tells him that things went well, adding: “No envelope, though.”
There is another respect in which the recordings could help Berlusconi. They imply that the 72 year-old billionaire politician, who has had prostate cancer, nevertheless has remarkable sexual endurance. It remains to be seen if that will inspire more admiration than censure among ordinary Italians.
D’Addario tells Tarantini “we didn’t sleep a wink” and when Berlusconi calls her later, she is heard to say that she is not tired even though she didn’t sleep. “Only my voice has gone,” she says. He replies: “Why? We didn’t shout.”
On the recording, both the voices sound gruff.
D’Addario, who stood as a candidate in local elections this year for a group close to the prime minister’s party, has given the recordings to prosecutors investigating Tarantini.
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Tapes revive Berlusconi furore
July 20th, 2009 |
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Lawyers for prime minister deny Italian website clips are of him and and an escort in conversation
The furore over Silvio Berlusconi’s private life was revived today when an Italian newspaper website produced what it said was a recording of the Italian prime minister as he prepared to get into bed with an escort.
La Repubblica posted recordings that the escort, Patrizia D’Addario, said she made during and after two visits to Palazzo Grazioli, Berlusconi’s residence in the centre of Rome, in November last year.
In one fragment of conversation, Berlusconi appears to direct D’Addario to wait for him in bed while he showers. In another, she protests to the man who set her up with the Italian prime minister that she had not received the €5,000 (£4,300) she was expecting.
In a third snippet, it is claimed she confides to the same intermediary that Berlusconi asked her whether next time they met she would agree to a menage a trois with another of the prime minister’s girlfriends.
“He said that he has a girlfriend and would like to have me licked by this girlfriend,” D’Addario says, according to the posted recordings.
Berlusconi’s lawyer Niccolo Ghedini disputed the authenticity of the recordings. He said they were “without any merit, completely improbable and the fruit of invention.” A spokesman for Berlusconi’s governing Freedom People movement described the dissemination of the tapes as “pathetic”.
The content of the conversations was reported in broad terms last month, but this is the first time that the alleged recordings themselves have been made available, along with full transcripts.
One of them, claimed to have been made by D’Addario in the prime minister’s bedroom, appeared to back up reports that Berlusconi’s guests were entertained on a giant bed, which according to the transcripts, is in some way associated with the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin. The recording is of poor quality, however.
After an exchange in which the prime minister seems to be offering D’Addario a present, the conversation continues as follows:
SB: I’m taking a shower too. And then, then you wait for me on the big bed if you finish before me.
PD: Which big bed? Putin’s.
SB: Putin’s.
PD: Oh, how lovely! The one with the curtains.
In a recording allegedly made the following morning, D’Addario rings the man who introduced her to Berlusconi. She tells him: “We didn’t get a wink of sleep”. But adds, “no envelope, though”.
She said that she had received: “I don’t know, a little turtle”, but not “the envelope – 5000 euros”, mentioned by a friend who had also visited Palazzo Grazioli.
The allegations about Berlusconi’s private life have escalated since he was accused of consorting with minors after attending the 18th birthday party of Noemi Letizia, an aspiring model who called the 72-year-old “Papi” during phone conversations. That was enough to push Berlusconi’s wife to ask for a divorce.
Since then, details of his alleged dealings with escort girls emerged by chance, during a separate investigation into supposed prostitution rackets in the southern city of Bari.
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William Bradley: Hillary’s Back! (Or Not)
July 16th, 2009 |
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Hillary Clinton’s notorious “3 AM” TV ad ad attacked Barack Obama during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries as being unprepared on geopolitics. But President…
Russian rights campaigner murdered
July 15th, 2009 |
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Natalia Estemirova found shot dead after being abducted outside her home
Russia’s human rights record tonight came under severe criticism after one of the country’s most famous human rights campaigners was abducted from her home in Chechnya and brutally murdered.
Natalia Estemirova was seized by four unknown men this morning as she left for work. Neighbours at her house in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, heard her shout: “I’m being kidnapped.”
Her body was found near Gazi-Yurt village, in neighbouring Ingushetia. She had been shot twice in the head and chest, police said, adding that her corpse had been dumped on the main road.
Human rights activists expressed outrage at her murder, reminiscent of the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist, writer, and bitter Kremlin critic shot dead outside her Moscow apartment in 2006.
Estemirova, 50, was a close friend of Politkovskaya’s. The two had collaborated on numerous investigations into human rights abuses in Chechnya. Both were scathing opponents of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin president.
“Natasha was at the forefront of some of the most intense human rights investigations in Chechnya,” said Allison Gill, director of Human Rights Watch in Russia. “She was targeted because of her work. I have no doubt her killing was to silence her. One of the most amazing things about Natasha is that she never stopped doing what she was doing. She never checked herself. She was highly public in her calls for accountability.
“I think the human rights situation is in crisis in Russia,” she added. “We have a deathly silence from the authorities whenever activists, lawyers or journalists are murdered. Not a single person is brought to justice.”
Estemirova was the Chechnya-based head of Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights group.
Operating out of a small office in Grozny, she doggedly pursued stories of human rights abuses in the face of official intimidation and hostility.
She recently collaborated on two damning reports into punitive house burnings and extra-judicial killings in Chechnya, allegedly carried out by Kadyrov’s forces. The reports documented how on 2 July his troops allegedly shot 20-year-old Madina Yunusova and her husband near Grozny.
Chechen officials claimed her husband had been involved in a plot to kill Kadyrov. Yunosova died three days later in hospital under mysterious circumstances.
“Natasha was always involved in the most sensitive cases. She knew what she was doing. She knew the risks,” Shamil Tangiyev, a former Memorial colleague said. “She was extremely brave. It was in her nature to be an activist.”
Estemirova made no attempt to hide her work. Her office near the newly renamed Putin avenue was well known.
The timing of her murder follows Barack Obama’s first visit to Moscow last week as US president. Obama met with Russian human rights activists and set out the US’s commitment to “universal values”.
The Kremlin responded with hardline pronouncements, with the president, Dmitry Medvedev, visiting the breakaway Georgian republic of South Ossetia on Monday. The trip appeared to be a direct rebuff to Obama who had said that both Georgia and Ukraine should be free to choose their own leaders.
Estemirova, who leaves a 15-year-old daughter, was probably the best-known human rights activist in Russia’s provinces.
Earlier this year she attended the trial in Moscow of four people – two of them Chechens – accused of involvement in Politkovskaya’s murder.
Speaking to the Guardian in February, Estemirova called the Politkovskaya trial a “farce”.
Kadyrov, a close ally of Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has denied accusations he was involved in Politkovskaya’s killing, remarking: “I don’t kill women.”
Recently the Kremlin has given Kadyrov unprecedented powers for counter-terrorist operations in Ingushetia, amid a worsening Islamist insurgency across the entire North Caucasus.
Estemirova was also a close colleague of Stanislav Markelov, the human rights lawyer murdered in Moscow in January. A masked assassin shot Markelov in the back of the head, not far from the Kremlin, along with Anastasia Baburova, a journalist with the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
Tonight human rights activists urged the west to place human rights at the centre of any dialogue with Russia. Gill said: “We can’t talk about trade or energy without mentioning the rule of law.”
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Deepak Chopra: Will Russia Join the World?
July 13th, 2009 |
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On his visit to Moscow, President Obama carried more than an olive branch. He urged Russia to join the global community, which may be more…
Obama warns Russia on interference
July 7th, 2009 |
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US president goes on first trip to Russia and calls on Moscow to stop viewing America as an enemy
Barack Obama today set out his vision for a new post-cold war world, and urged Russia not to interfere in neighbouring states and to move on “from old ways of thinking”.
In a keynote speech during his first trip to Russia as US president, Obama called on Moscow to stop viewing America as an adversary. The assumption that Russia and the US were eternal antagonists was “a 20th-century view” rooted in the past, he said.
Obama delivered a tough, though implicit, critique of Kremlin foreign policy, rejecting the claim it has “privileged interests” in post-Soviet countries. He said the 19th-century doctrine of spheres of influence and “great powers forging competing blocs” was finished.
“In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonising other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chessboard are over,” he said, speaking to graduates from Moscow’s New Economic School.
He added: “As I said in Cairo, given our interdependence any world order that tries to elevate one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. That is why I have called for a ‘reset’ in relations between the United States and Russia.
“America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia.”
Obama acknowledged that the US needed to play its part in bringing about a fresh start with Russia – “a great power”. And he paid tribute to the achievements of Russian writers and scientists, even managing to quote a line from Pushkin when he told the students: “Inspiration is needed in geometry just as much as in poetry.”
Crucially, though, Obama indicated that Washington would not tolerate another Russian invasion of Georgia. Russia is winding up full-scale military exercises next to the Georgian border amid ominous predictions that a second conflict in the Caucasus could erupt this summer.
On Monday Obama reaffirmed Georgia’s sovereignty – severely undermined by last year’s war and Moscow’s subsequent unilateral recognition of rebel-held Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. Today Obama defended “state sovereignty”, describing it as “a cornerstone of international order”.
He also said that Georgia and Ukraine had a right to choose their own foreign policy and leaders, and could join Nato if they wanted. Russia is deeply opposed to Ukraine’s and Georgia’s accession, and wants the White House to rule out their future membership. Today Obama responded by saying that Nato sought collaboration with Russia, not confrontation.
Earlier, Obama had breakfast with Vladimir Putin, the man whom most people regard as Russia’s real ruler. Last week Obama described Putin, Russia’s prime minister, as having “one foot in the past”. Today, however, he talked to him for two and a half hours – longer than planned and an admission of Putin’s continuing importance. The meeting, their first, was “excellent”, Obama said.
During his speech, however, Obama delivered a withering assessment of Putinism. Without mentioning Russia by name, Obama spelled out the US’s commitment to “universal values”. These included the rule of law, the equal administration of justice, and competitive elections – all things missing from Putin’s vertically managed authoritarian state.
Obama also stressed the importance of “independent media in exposing corruption at all levels of business and government”. Russia’s state-controlled TV has largely snubbed Obama’s first trip to Moscow, apparently on Kremlin orders, either failing to mention him at all or relegating him to the lower regions of the news schedule.
On Monday Obama and Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, agreed a framework document that would see both sides cut their nuclear arsenals by up to a third. Today Obama warned again of the dangers of nuclear proliferation, and urged Moscow to join with the US to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and to end North Korea’s nuclear efforts.
He also reaffirmed that the US would only go ahead with its planned missile defence shield in central Europe – opposed by the Kremlin – if there was an Iranian nuclear “threat”. He said neither the US or Russia would benefit from a nuclear arms race in east Asia or the Middle East.
“In the short period since the end of the cold war we have already seen India, Pakistan and North Korea conduct nuclear tests. Without a fundamental change, do any of us truly believe that the next two decades will not bring about the further spread of nuclear weapons?” he asked.
“That is why America is committed to stopping nuclear proliferation, and ultimately seeking a world without nuclear weapons … And while I know this goal won’t be met soon, pursuing it provides the legal and moral foundation to prevent the proliferation and eventual use of nuclear weapons.”
The White House billed Obama’s Moscow address as a “major foreign policy speech”. It is the third in a series of major speeches that began in April in Prague, where he discussed disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation, and continued in Cairo, where he offered a fresh US approach to the Middle East and Muslim communities.
Later, Obama met the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. He is due to meet business leaders and hold talks with civil society activists, including the opposition leader and former world chess champion Gary Kasparov.
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Nuclear arms reduction deal row
July 6th, 2009 |
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• Nuclear arms cuts treaty hits familiar problem
• Medvedev expects US concessions before deal
Hopes of a new nuclear arms reduction deal between Moscow and Washington appeared to be in doubt today, after Russia said there could be no agreement unless the US was prepared to heed its concerns on missile defence.
Barack Obama flies into Moscow tomorrow for his first trip to Russia as US president. The summit’s centrepiece is supposed to be a groundbreaking agreement on nuclear arms reduction.
Obama and Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, agreed during their last meeting in April to hold talks on a successor treaty to the 1991 Start-1 pact, which expires in December. But attempts to reach a deal appear to have come unstuck over the same problem that defeated the Bush administration: the Kremlin’s unbending hostility to the Pentagon’s planned missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. While Obama has agreed to review the plan, he is not prepared to abandon it. Today Medvedev said that any new arms reduction treaty was definitively “linked” to the US’s missile defence ambitions in central Europe.
Medvedev said: “We consider these issues are interconnected. It is sufficient to show restraint and show an ability to compromise. And then we can agree on the basis of a new deal on Start.”
Medevedev’s comments place Obama in an uncomfortable position on the eve of one of the biggest foreign policy trips of his presidency. If he makes concessions he risks a political backlash at home and the charge of capitulation. If he doesn’t, he may emerge from the US-Russia summit no more successful than George Bush.
Today Russian officials revealed that they had not been able to reach agreement on a “framework document” setting out a blueprint for nuclear talks ‑ an ominous sign. Obama, however, made clear his determination to improve relations.
“I believe that Americans and Russians have many common interests, interests that our governments have not pursued as actively as we could have,” he told the Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.
On Tuesday he will meet Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister and the man who most people believe still runs the country. Obama described Putin slightingly last week as having “one foot in the past”.
In his interview, Obama acknowledged “Russian sensitivities” over the shield, but said it was needed to protect the US and Europe from a nuclear-armed Iranian missile. He made clear he would not accept Moscow’s linkage between arms control and missile defence, a statement that suggest there is little prospect of a rapid breakthrough.
Today analysts said there were profound, irreconcilable differences between both sides, not just over the shield, but technical issues including counting, verification, and delivery systems.
“It requires a miracle to resolve these differences,” Sergey Rogov, director of the US and Canadian Institute in Moscow, said.
The US and Russia account for more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. They have agreed in principle to reduce their nuclear warheads below the 2,000 agreed in the Start treaty to 1,500-1,700 each. But they have not been able to agree on a reduction in delivery systems, which include intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles or heavy bombers.
According to Rogov, Russia wants to reduce the number of launchers to 600. The US is insisting on around 1,000. Additionally, Moscow is against the US having what it calls a “return potential”, which would allow nuclear weapons scrapped by the US to be redeployed in the event of a nuclear crisis. “I’m not sure Obama understands it,” Rogov said.
Writing last week in Novaya Gazeta, the Moscow defence analyst Pavel Felgenhaur predicted the summit would be a failure. He said the Russian government, emboldened by the recent oil price rise, expected the US to make “one-sided” concessions while making none itself.
During his two-and-a-half day trip to Moscow, Obama is expected to seek Russia’s co-operation on Iran, and support for a stronger sanctions regime against North Korea. Today, however, Medevev hailed Iran as a “major partner”.
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Obama interview risks Russian ire
July 3rd, 2009 |
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US president signals tough stance by speaking with prominent opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta ahead of state visit
Barack Obama is to give an interview to the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta before his trip to Moscow on Monday, in the clearest sign yet that his administration will take an unexpectedly tough approach in its dealings with the Kremlin. Obama will talk to the editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, and meet the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who co-owns the paper.
Novaya Gazeta is famous for its critical reporting of the Russian government. Its special correspondent Anna Politkovskaya is one of four reporters from the paper to have been murdered. A critic of the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, she was shot dead in Moscow in October 2006.
Formally, Obama is following in the footsteps of Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, who granted Novaya an interview in April. This week the paper published its own investigation into the origins of last summer’s war between Russia and Georgia. The Kremlin blamed Georgia’s pro-US leader, Mikheil Saakashvili. According to Novaya, however, the Kremlin planned its invasion of Georgia long in advance, sending columns of tanks.
There has been a wide-ranging debate inside Obama’s administration on how to engage with Russia, after the disastrous Bush years. By last autumn relations between Moscow and Washington had sunk to their lowest since the 1980s.
Foreign policy realists argue that in order to “reset” relations with Moscow, and secure Russia’s support for US priorities like Iran and Afghanistan, Obama should soft-pedal his support for human rights. Idealists want a vigorous, values-based engagement with the Kremlin.
Writing in the Moscow Times last week, Russian analyst Lilia Shevtsova noted: “The outcome of Obama’s visit will depend on the willingness of the US to see the differences between the national interest of Russia and the interests of Russia’s ruling elite.”
A Russian presidential spokesman, Sergei Prikhodko, said Obama and Medvedev would sign “framework agreements” on Monday, covering nuclear arms reduction, military co-operation and the transit of US supplies to Afghanistan. They have pledged to agree a replacement to the Start-1 nuclear treaty, which expires on December 5. But experts are sceptical. Prikhodko confirmed that a deal could only take place if the US acknowledged Russia’s “concerns” over the US missile defence shield in central Europe. The Kremlin wants Obama to dump it.
Human rights groups want Obama to raise the issue of murdered Russian journalists. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says 17 journalists have been killed since 2000.
On Thursday Obama described Putin as a cold war figure with “one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot on the new”. Putin responded: “As regards our standing one foot in the past and the other ahead, we cannot stand, as they say, perhaps not in a very literary way, with out legs apart. We stand firmly on our feet and always look to the future.”
Putin said he was looking forward to Obama’s visit “with very warm feelings”.
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Obama: Putin has one foot in the past
July 2nd, 2009 |
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• Hopes fade for ‘reset’ in US-Russian relations
• Remarks follow praise for successor Medvedev
Barack Obama has chided Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, for “cold war approaches” to relations with the US, saying Putin had “one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new”, just days before the two men meet in Moscow.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Obama said the US was developing a “very good relationship” with Putin’s successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev, over issues such as nuclear arms reduction. But the American president acknowledged the balance of power in Russia by saying that he would also meet Putin, because he “still has sway”.
“I think that it’s important that, even as we move forward with President Medvedev, that Putin understand that the old cold war approaches to US-Russian relations is outdated – that it’s time to move forward in a different direction”, said Obama. “I think Medvedev understands that.
“I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new. To the extent that we can provide him and the Russian people a clear sense that the US is not seeking an antagonistic relationship, but wants co-operation on nuclear non-proliferation, fighting terrorism, energy issues, we’ll end up having a stronger partner overall in this process.”
In April, Obama met Medvedev and spoke of “the beginning of new progress” in relations, praising the Russian president as “critical” to that movement. After that meeting, the two men issued a statement saying they were ready “to move beyond cold war mentalities”.
Obama’s latest remarks clarify that he sees Putin standing in the way of progress, particularly on issues such as weapons reduction. His comments may in part be driven by a belief that Putin is behind Russian objections to US plans to place a missile system in eastern Europe.
However his remarks, likely to infuriate the Kremlin, come amid growing pessimism that next week’s Moscow trip will lead to a genuine “reset” in relations.
Putin will discuss “tactical and strategic issues” with Obama, the prime minister’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said last night. He added: “Putin will want to share his vision of current Russian-US relations on the basis of his experience of intensive contacts at the highest level when he was president. He has tremendous experience of contact with US presidents and a brilliant knowledge of the agenda.”
Peskov told Ekho Moskvy radio: “Of course, he will be interested to understand the new US head of state, in order to make his modest contribution to the vision of possible prospects of development.”
Medvedev became president last year, when Putin took the job of prime minister. While Medvedev has adopted a more liberal-seeming rhetoric, differences with his predecessor are stylistic, rather than substantive. Few in Russia doubt that Putin is the supreme arbiter of foreign policy.
During his Moscow trip, Obama is likely to discuss Iran, Russian co-operation over transit supplies to Afghanistan and a new nuclear arms reduction agreement. Both sides have agreed in principle to reduce their nuclear arsenals to 1,500 warheads each, after Obama and Medvedev’s meeting in April at the G8 summit in London.
In reality, there is little prospect of a swift arms reduction deal. The Kremlin wants the US to cancel its missile defence shield in eastern Europe in return for concessions in arms reduction – a demand Obama is unlikely to meet.
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Obama chides Putin’s ‘cold war ways’
July 2nd, 2009 |
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President chides Russia’s PM but says Dmitry Medvedev understands that cold war behaviour is outdated
On the eve of a trip to Moscow, Barack Obama chided Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, today for keeping “one foot in the old ways of doing business”. By contrast, he said Putin’s handpicked successor as president understands that cold war behaviour is outdated.
In a White House interview with The Associated Press, the president said he will meet with both Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, on his trip, in hopes they can “move in concert in cooperating with us on some critical issues.”
On an important domestic issue, Obama said the US supreme court was “moving the ball” on affirmative action in this week’s decision favouring white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut, but he added that the court had not ruled out the use of racial preferences. “I don’t think that hiring on the basis of race … alone is constitutionally plausible,” said Obama, a former teacher of constitutional law.
He spoke sympathetically at one point of the white firefighters, who said they had been discriminated against: “I’ve always believed that affirmative action was less of an issue or should be less of an issue than it has been made out to be in news reports.”
Nearing the end of his first six months in office, the president said he had made some progress in stabilising the economy, but he conceded too many jobs are still being lost.
He also expressed concern about his own policy on dealing with the prisoners now held at Guantánamo Bay, saying the idea of retaining at least some of the detainees indefinitely in different locations gives him pause. But he did not rule out issuing an executive order to that effect if Congress refuses to pass legislation.
Scheduled to depart next week on a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana, Obama praised Moscow for its cooperation in attempting to persuade North Korea and Iran to abandon their nuclear development programs. The United Nations recently approved “the most robust sanction regime that we’ve ever seen with respect to North Korea,” he said.
The president said his agenda in Russia includes talks on a new treaty to curtail long-range nuclear missiles.
Asked why he intends to meet Putin, Obama said the former president “still has a lot of sway … and I think that it’s important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev that Putin understand that the old cold war approaches to US-Russian relations is outdated — that’s it’s time to move forward in a different direction”.
“I think Medvedev understands that. I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new, and to the extent that we can provide him and the Russian people a clear sense that the US is not seeking an antagonistic relationship but wants cooperation on nuclear non-proliferation, fighting terrorism, energy issues, that we’ll end up having a stronger partner overall in this process,” he said.
Obama expressed reservations about his recently announced policy that could lead to indefinite detention for some of the detainees currently at the Guantánamo Bay prison. “It gives me huge pause,” he said, to the point where he may not see it through.
“We’re going to proceed very carefully on this front, and it may turn out that after looking at all the dimensions of this that I don’t feel comfortable with (it),” Obama said. The president has pledged to close the prison in Cuba and hopes to send most of those currently held there to other countries.
With joblessness rising, the president said he was “deeply concerned” about unemployment and conceded that too many families are worried about “whether they will be next”. Still, he said that since he took office almost six months ago “we have successfully stabilised the financial markets,” and “started to see some stabilisation on housing”.
“But what we are still seeing is too many jobs lost,” said Obama, commenting after new government figures showed the unemployment rate had risen to 9.5% last month.
Since Obama signed the $780bn economic stimulus bill in February, the economy has shed more than 2 million jobs.
Asked if he was resigned to Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons, he said: “I’m not reconciled with that, and I don’t think the international community is reconciled with that.”
In his comments on the supreme court case, Obama said the 5-4 ruling was written narrowly, and “didn’t close the door to affirmative action” to help minorities.
Obama said of affirmative action: “It hasn’t been as potent a force for racial progress as advocates will claim and it hasn’t been as bad on white students seeking admissions or seeking a job as its critics say.”
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How to handle Russia
When he meets Medvedev in Moscow, Obama should know this is not a mighty superpower, but a weak and corrupt federation
US president Barack Obama arrives in Moscow on Monday 6 July. Here, in Russia, he is awaited with some foreboding – he is, after all, the most powerful man on earth. The Kremlin hopes he will announce a “reset” in US-Russian relations, and recognise today’s Russia as a respected, worthy ally. Russia’s liberals, by contrast, want him to admonish the Kremlin for shortcomings in its authoritarian regime.
Many Russians see Obama as a kind of secret messiah, chosen to guide the nation towards a new phase in its historical development. Surprisingly, among Russia’s ruling elite there is no real anti-American sentiment: both those in power and Russia’s opposition crave, more than anything else, America’s love. If sometimes America aggrieves them, and from time to time they criticise Washington, they do so only because they are afraid of the US not returning their love.
Contrary to the beliefs of many politicians, today’s Russian Federation has absolutely nothing in common with the late USSR. If anything, the Russian Federation is the world’s most anti-Soviet government. The USSR was based on socialism, state ownership, collectivisation, the cult worship of Marxism-Leninism, the export of communism and the need for military and political influence in satellite countries and regions. The Russian Federation is based upon very different ideals: namely, capitalism, private ownership, total individualism, the cult of money, the rejection of traditional state paternalism and widespread corruption at all levels of power.
Another important factor is the desire to secure the ruling elite’s business interests all over the world. Neither Vladimir Putin nor Dmitry Medvedev have real power. Power belongs to big capital –which, in Russia, means those who benefited from the massive privatisations of Soviet infrastructure. Resetting relations with the US is important for the Kremlin since it is a way for Russia to gain entry to western markets and investment. Therefore, this issue can and should be discussed with Medvedev – and only Medvedev. Putin shouldn’t even get a look-in.
Today’s Russian rulers don’t hate democracy or freedom. Rather, they simply don’t believe such values exist, are necessary or of use. But they do believe inmoney and technology. This must be taken into account when entering into any dialogue with them. The Russian elite doesn’t conceive of itself in political or geopolitical terms. So there isn’t any point in asking the leadership about any strategic game plan in its relations with Iran or the satellite countries of the former USSR. They do not know themselves. There are no political positions that they would not, in principle, be willing to abandon in exchange for proper compensation.
Over the past 90 years, Russia has never been as weak as today. Officially, the Kremlin has a tight grip over the country; in reality, this is a myth. The only ruling principle and source of power in Russia is corruption. It only takes into consideration the wishes of the Kremlin when it needs to. Moscow’s influence on former parts of its empire is finished: the latest events in Belarus and Kyrgyzstan eloquently confirm this. Control over large parts of the north Caucasus has been lost. Russia’s armed forces have withered away, technologically and morally. And the post-Soviet economic model, based on the export of raw materials and the import of everything else, is careering towards a crash: unemployment figures are rising by 250,000 to 300,000 per month; while industrial output is declining by 15-17% per month. The current rise in the price of oil does nothing to improve the picture.
Russia has no political opposition that could bring about regime change. Critics of the Kremlin – from ultra-liberals to communists – have been co-opted into the power system. This has happened because of corruption, and because the opposition fears open political conflict. At present, a protest movement across Russia is beginning to stir, but without a proper legal and political superstructure the only way it can be expressed is, to use Pushkin’s phrase, through senseless and ruthless riots.
Russia’s elite has recently come up with several daft ideas, including making the rouble an international reserve currency. The most talented and able members of Russia’s political establishment have been systematically disposed of over the past decade, leaving only the dregs. Their main goal has been to reduce inter-elite competition and to conserve their own power.
Before Obama takes the Kremlin or its utterances too seriously, he should remember this: to this day, the Kremlin believes the Orange revolution in the Ukraine to be the result of an American conspiracy; and that, until the beginning of November 2008, the leaders of Russia genuinely thought the next president of the United States would be John McCain because, in their opinion, a black man would never become American president.
If Obama really wants to improve relations with Moscow, he must take the lead. Obama should suggest to Russia’s leaders that they should be permitted to make investments in the west, allowing them (by means of an exchange in assets) to invest in the US gas market, letting Gazprom join a consortium for the modernisation of, for example, Ukraine’s gas transport system. Obama must also stress to Medvedev and his entourage that the White House considers him and other Kremlin leaders to be strong political partners. If Obama makes these overtures, Moscow will make political and defence concessions at a faster and more extensive rate than many experts believe.
Russia is no longer a superpower. And Russia poses no threat to Europe or America when strong. Rather, the danger lies in a weak Russia precipitating the destruction of its own statehood. If the gigantic territory that lies between eastern Prussia and the Siberian/Ussuryisk Taiga becomes uncontrollable, Europe and the US will find themselves confronted with a greater danger than that posed by the nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea. It is crucial to monitor Russia’s decline, so that a catastrophe does not catch western powers off-guard.