Perhaps best known for throwing a glass of juice in the face of ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky during a debate on a TV talk show in 1995 (and getting away with it, at a time when Zhironvsky was at his most menacing), Boris Nemtsov has long been the golden boy of post-Soviet Russia, the country’s best imitation of JFK. Granted, even the actual JFK left much to be desired — so a Russian knock-off is hardly likely to save the world. But in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is tsar — and a white paper he recently published assessing the accomplishments and failures of the Putin administration deserves close attention.
Ant is is a fascinating document indeed:
Despite his pretensions of courage and power, Putin is afraid of Nemtsov just the way the tsar feared Pushkin and the Politburo feared Solzhenitsyn. They’re afraid mere words will bring them down. And the only response they can come up with is crude repression.
Scholarly and mercilessly thorough, Nemtsov’s paper systematically dismantles the claimed achievements of the Putin regime and paints a picture of failure and looming disaster that is genuinely disturbing to read, not least because of the dispassionate and clinical tone that the author adopts. It is, in his own words, meant to be “a sober and realistic analysis of how our lives have changed during the years of Putin’s rule.”
AND:
He writes “the police state has to be dismantled and human dignity returned to the people.” But he doesn’t even say how to wrest power from Putin, much less to undo his authoritarian regime. But such criticism is beside the point. Russia can’t begin to reform until the people of the country have agreed that reform is needed, which they can’t do until they’ve been told the true facts, and Nemtsov knows that because of Putin’s crackdown they simply don’t. Indeed, they can’t even buy his book in bookstores, and most can’t access the Internet, which is increasingly under siege from Putin as well, as we’ve previously reported.
Read it all. Because it’s clear from this article that the truth about Russia will be known outside of Russia — but it won’t be inside of Russia.
“The Bucharest summit has shown that NATO - or Europe and the West in general, is in more difficulty that it at first appeared. … The well-concealed disagreements about the participation of NATO members in operations in Afghanistan demonstrate the failure of the military Alliance, and its ambiguous position as an accessory to the American war machine.”
Now that what was billed as one of the most important NATO Summits in decades is over, what nations made out the best? Yeltsin’s former Foreign and Prime Minister, Evgeny Primakov, writes for Kommersant, “Those who ran headlong to NATO despite the likely implications have unequivocally lost. … Russia’s voice is being heard … and that can be considered a great achievement. On the other hand, we shouldn’t deceive ourselves: what happened in Bucharest did nothing to negate Georgian and Ukrainian aspirations to join NATO.”
As far as the Americans, Primakov writes, “And as paradoxical as it is, I think that among the winners was the United States. President Bush stated very firmly that he is fully behind the accession of Ukraine and Georgia, and has thus dramatically improved America’s position among the ruling elites of these countries. But now he must meet with Vladimir Putin. I dare to hope that Bush is interested in having a successful meeting.” Read the rest of this entry »
What’s Europe’s perception of President Bush, now that he’s appearing at his last NATO Summit? From Le Figaro, France’s largest and most pro-American newspaper, comes this editorial. Written by Pierre Rousselin, the judgment of Bush’s legacy is a harsh one. Rousselin writes, “If the American president would take a sincere accounting of his actions, he would observe that he leaves a weakened Atlantic Alliance in military difficulty in Afghanistan, politically divided in the face of a more aggressive Russia, and ever-hesitant about its missions, its scope of activity and its raison d’être in the 21st century.”
Rousselin goes on to say, “Beyond the press releases glorifying painstaking compromise, the summit, which is to be followed on Friday by an unprecedented dialog with Vladimir Putin, highlights the lack of American “leadership” in the world at the end of a period marked by the Iraq War and the transatlantic crisis that it has unleashed. It is a sad result for a presidency that at its inception placed itself under the rubric of putting the use of force at the service of a conquering ideology.”
Editorial By Pierre Rousselin
Translated By Sandrine Ageorges
April 3, 2008
France - Le Figaro - Original Article (France)
The NATO summit in Bucharest is the final farewell of the allies to George W. Bush. If the American president would take a sincere accounting of his actions, he would observe that he leaves a weakened Atlantic Alliance in military difficulty in Afghanistan, politically divided in the face of a more aggressive Russia, and ever-hesitant about its missions, its scope of activity and its raison d’être in the 21st century. Read the rest of this entry »
Wonder how the NATO Summit in Bucharest is being covered in the Russian press? Russian concerns about the meeting, infighting over why President Putin isn’t being given a platform to speak at the summit, and the details of Thursday’s events are all covered in somewhat excruciating detail in this analysis from Russia’s Kommersant. Apparently, the Kremlin is upset that President Putin won’t be able to address the public at the conference, suspicious that the Alliance is trying to prevent a repeat of his Munich Speech of last year, in which Putin criticized the United States.
According to Dmitry Rogozin, Russian Ambassador to NATO, “The leadership of the Alliance is committed to curtailing most of the debate. The Russian President will be unable speak publicly on the most important questions of world politics. This is an ugly spectacle, and attempts to blame it on the rules are inappropriate.
By Mikhail Zygar and Vladimir Solovyev
Translated By Igor Medvidev
April 2, 2009
Kommersant - Russia - Original Article (Russian)
The NATO summit opens today in Bucharest, and it may be the most scandalous summit in the history of the organization. Ukraine and Georgia will attempt to obtain entry into the Alliance’s Membership Action Plan, while Russia and its key economic partners try to prevent this. The format of the Russia-NATO meetings won’t give Putin a chance to make another Munich speech. But the presidents of Georgia and Ukraine and former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov will be given a chance to speak.
[Editor’s Note: In his speech to the Munich Conference on Security Policy last year, President Putin said, among other things, “One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this? And of course this is extremely dangerous. The result of this is that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this no one feels safe! Because no one feels that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them!” Read the rest of this entry »
How do the Russians view the three remaining U.S. presidential aspirants? After explaining that there isn’t a hair’s breath of difference between President Bush and John McCain on the issue of Russia, Novosti political affairs analyst Dmitry Gornostayev writes, “The Democrats think the same way as McCain. No, not on health care, abortion, the withdrawal of troops from Iraq or the right to carry firearms - God Forbid! - on these issues they are prepared to argue until they’re hoarse. But in regard to Russia (I dare say a marginal issue for American voters), there is a complete consensus.” Gornostayev concludes, “The words, of course, may differ - but action is always in one in the same direction. You ask what political bias is worse - Republican or Democratic? The two are equally as bad.”
By Dmitry Gornostayev
Translated By Igor Medvevev
March 27, 2008
Russia - Novosti - Original Article (Russian)
NEW YORK: What the President keeps to himself, his nominee reveals. Of course, if John McCain is elected President of the United States, he will not repeat what he just said to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. The President of the United States is not the person to repeat that the G8 should “expel Russia,” or speak of the need to “address the dangers posed by a revanchist Russia.”
Before the 2000 election and even during the first few months of his presidency, George W. Bush also criticized Russia. He his first step in regard to Russia as head of state was to expel a large group of Russian diplomats from the United States. However, when he realized it would be necessary to meet the president of Russia, he had to reverse himself. It was then that he glanced into the eyes of Vladimir Putin and was able to “get a sense of his soul.” At least that’s what he told the world, and of course, his own voters, whom several months before he had been desperately trying to convince of the contrary.
If it is Senator McCain who will be President, he too will need to come up with a nice story about a sudden recovery of insight. But strictly speaking, this isn’t all that important. Neither does it matter if it’s McCain or one of the pair of Democrats that is elected. The Senator’s critical remarks about Russia, which incidentally were only a small part of his speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, seem to contain two fundamentally important points. The First is tactical and the second, strategic.
First, let’s address his tactics.
It’s not at all accidental that his tough criticism of Moscow coincided with a statement by Bush about his intention to travel to Russia to discuss differences over U.S.-Russian relations with outgoing President Vladimir Putin . Both or them - McCain and Bush - express the ideas of the political clan that still calls the shots in American foreign policy, the neoconservatives. Despite the different ways the two men express themselves, their philosophies on relations with Russia are essentially the same: to weaken Russia, and if that’s not possible, to deter it (incidentally, we shouldn’t be carried away by Russian pride in this regard - American policymakers are much more afraid of China).
It’s obvious that both of these statements constitute a single logical and tactical step - to assert at the highest levels the inevitability of deploying an anti-ballistic missile emplacement within Europe [in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Bush said in his speech, “I think a lot of people in Europe would have a deep sigh of relief if we’re able to reach an accord on missile defense. And hopefully we can.” By these comments, it’s clear under what conditions Bush will seek to conclude an agreement. This sounds rather nice when compared to the tenor of McCain’s remarks: “Rather than tolerate Russia’s nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, Western nations should make it clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization’s doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom.”
Is there any hope that the United States and Russia will be able to resolve at least some of their differences before President Bush leaves office? Fedor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the magazine Russia in Global Affairs writes for Kommersant, ‘The Bush Administration is one of the biggest lame ducks in history. Even if it wanted a historic achievement to crown its term with, it doesn’t have the political wherewithal: the world is openly preparing for the change of power in Washington.’ As far as the Russian side’s willingness to compromise, Lukyanov seems to hint at President-elect Medvedev’s lack of an electoral mandate by writing, “In terms of foreign policy, actions will be cautious, since the delicate balance between continuity and innovation must be kept. Both Russian leaders [Putin and Medvedev] will be looking to keep the other in mind as they confront the many domestic and foreign challenges.”
By Fedor Lukyanov*
Translated By Igor Medvedev
March 18, 2008
Kommersant - Russia - Original Article (Russian)
U.S.-Russian “two plus two” negotiations are always remarkable events. That’s no surprise, since it’s not every day that the ministers [and secretaries] responsible for both political and military strategy for the two nuclear superpowers get together. An awareness of the significance of these events generates high expectations, which then lead to disappointment. So it would be better for us now to identify the limits of the possible.
Can Russia and the United States make a breakthrough and resolve their differences? No they can’t, mainly because of the political situations in both countries.
The Bush Administration is one of the biggest lame ducks in history. Even if it wanted a historic achievement to crown its term with, it doesn’t have the political wherewithal: the world is openly preparing for the change of power in Washington. The ability of the United States to contribute to the stabilization of global currency and financial markets is very much in doubt.
In Moscow, there has been a de facto change in the system of power, and now the difficult process of configuring new mechanisms must begin. In terms of foreign policy, actions will be cautious, since the delicate balance between continuity and innovation must be kept. Both Russian leaders [Putin and Medvedev] will be looking to keep the other in mind as they confront the many domestic and foreign challenges. This is not conducive to revolutionary steps - and it will raise the suspicions of Russia’s partners.
The greatest challenge over the coming months will be to avoid open conflict, especially given the unfavorable situation that is now unfolding. The situation in and around Kosovo , the agenda for the upcoming NATO Summit in Bucharest , the construction of an anti-ballistic missile system in the post-Soviet countries and even in part, the situation in China in light of the tensions in Tibet – all could drastically worsen the atmosphere. As a result, new leaders “are tied” to the legacy of the previous period.
There are many disagreements between Moscow and Washington. But that’s not the main problem. In terms of generalities, no one disputes the fact that we live in a globalized world wherein all processes are interrelated, and all countries are mutually dependent. But as soon things get wrapped up in bilateral relations, globalization is forgotten and people behave as if this underlying reality no longer exists and mutual accusation becomes a goal in and of itself.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the United States.
This Guest Interview by Bill Steigerwald, columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Mother Russia Is a Bear — An Interview with Edward Lucas
By Bill Steigerwald
Look out for Mother Russia. The nation that emerged from the ruins of communism is not as dangerous to the world or as nasty to its own people as the old Soviet Union. But a new book by Edward Lucas, former Moscow bureau chief of The Economist, warns that Vladimir Putin and the ex-KGB thugs running oil-rich Russia have stifled the freedom of their citizens and turned their country into a menacing bully. I recently talked to Lucas in London by phone about his book “The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West.”
Q: What is your 60-second sound-bite description of what your book is about?
A: We’ve been too complacent about Russia too long. The trajectory is ominous and this is a threat not only to Russians, who suffer under an authoritarian regime, but also to the countries of Eastern Europe, where Russia is pushing back hard, using money rather than military, but still very effectively; and also to us in the West as well.
Q: When you say “the Kremlin is menacing the West” in the title of your United Kingdom edition, who and what do you mean by Kremlin?
A: When I say “Kremlin,” I mean the ex-KGB people who run Russia. They took piece-by-piece in the 1990s, when the attempt to liquidate the old KGB failed. Mr. Putin came back as prime minister in 1999, when the Yeltsin regime was on its last legs, and then as president in 2000, and that’s really the first time in Russian history that the secret police have actually run the country. That’s had several bad, I would say even deplorable, effects.
It has become quite common in some parts of the world to wonder whether American democracy continues to be head-and-shoulders above Russia’s. But according to Patrik Etschmayer of Switzerland’s Nachrichten newspaper, Russia’s recent presidential ‘election’ and America’s ongoing presidential race should put any such chattering to rest. Etschmayer writes in part, ‘American democracy undoubtedly suffers many shortcomings, like voting machines that can be manipulated, smear campaigns, and the fact that apart from the two parties, there is virtually no chance for a candidate to establish him or herself. But American democracy is not yet completely ruined. Last weekend however, Russia’s took another step toward self-imposed dismantling and its rebuilding into a Potemkin democracy - only a facade.’
By Patrik Etschmayer
Translated By Ulf Behncke
March 3, 2008
Switzerland - Nachrichten - Original Article (German)
The world media and election observers are all in agreement: Russia’s presidential elections were a farce. The Russians held an election without a choice, and the President was chosen by his predecessor Putin, who as prime minister will keep his new “boss” Dimitrij Medvedev under his thumb.
Some still hope that the Putin saga will play out again with Medvedev. Because even the strongman from Moscow was initially regarded as a predictable, weak president - merely a stooge in office. But today the arrangement is quite different. At the time, Putin took over from the sick, alcoholic Boris Yeltsin, Read the rest of this entry »
Just under the radar screen of most of the American media, comments and threats from the Russians have set our East European allies on edge. In this somewhat alarming op-ed from Romania’s Ziarul newspaper, the author frets, “The Russian Defense Minister said that to ‘defend the sovereignty of Russia and its allies,’ the Russian state could use nuclear weapons against NATO allies like Romania, the Czech Republic, Poland and Bulgaria. Hello NATO, have you heard this? Hello E.U., have you heard this? Do you understand that Romania is now a Russian nuclear target? BAAAA!!”
By Igor Drag, Translated By Marcel Iliescu, January 22, 2008
Romania - Ziarul - Original Article (Romanian)
While Defense Minister Melescanu talks nonsense about Romania not having enough heart and blood to keep troops in Iraq, and while the same Melescanu walks parade-style walk through the Ministry of Justice’s domain, hindering the release of National Anti-corruption Agency files calling into question the fairness of the trial process, what’s has the world come to?
It’s raining, some would say. It’s raining declarations about how Romania could soon be one of Europe’s most important “mushroom plantations” [a reference to the mushroom clous of a nuclear blast]. Read the rest of this entry »
December 21st, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
America’s Time magazine recently crowned Russian President Vladimir Putin as ‘Man of the Year’ and carried an article “A Tzar is Born”. But Russian Tsars of yore were always rich…so how can Putin lag behind?
The Guardian reports: “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…” More here…
I wonder if there is any country in the world where the leader and his/her henchmen live a modest life in the service of their country and the people??? It is a great wonder that the world survives despite leaders who seem hell bent in trashing the system and filling their own (or their henchmen’s) coffers…
There’s yet another case of someone who wasn’t a buddie of Russian President Vladmir Putin having been on an assassin’s list — only this time British authorities averted it:
The murder of a second Russian dissident on British soil was averted last month when police and intelligence agencies intercepted a suspected killer in London, it was confirmed last night.
In a move likely to damage already strained relations between Britain and Russia, Scotland Yard said that officers arrested a man on suspicion of conspiracy to murder on June 21 and held him for two days. He was later handed over to the immigration service and deported back to Russia.
The man arrived in London in mid-June allegedly with orders to murder the billionaire Russian exile Boris Berezovsky, a staunch opponent of President Putin, who has been granted asylum to live in Britain.
Ahhh. It’s probably just a concidence…MORE:
Yesterday Mr Berezovsky blamed Mr Putin personally for the failed murder plot. He also repeated the charge that the Russian leader was responsible for the murder of Litvinenko, the former Russian intelligence officer killed by a lethal dose of polonium-210, a radioactive isotope. “It is Putin personally behind this plot, Litvinenko and mine,†said Mr Berezovsky.
However, in a letter to The Times, Yury Fedotov, the Russian Ambassador to London, said that it was preposterous to assert that the killing of Litvinenko “appears to have the clear backing of the Russian Governmentâ€.
He wrote: “The Russian Government values its relations with the UK and respects its laws and con- stitutional arrangements.”
The alleged murder plot would have been planned as Tony Blair, then the Prime Minister, held a tense meeting with Mr Putin at the G8 summit in Germany on June 8. It came in the wake of the British Government’s formal request to Russia for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoy, a former KGB operative, for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the dissident, in London in November last year. The Russians have refused to extradite Mr Lugovoy.
Coincidence? One fact is that some of Mr. Putin’s foes have suddenly experienced shorter life expectancies…
In June 2001, when George W. Bush held his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, he famously declared that he had “looked the man in the eye” and “was able to get a sense of his soul,” in which he evidently saw only good things untainted by years of KGB service. This beginning of a beautiful friendship was reportedly aided by Putin’s touching story of a cross which he received from his mother and which miraculously survived a fire at his summer cottage. (As one of Russia’s surviving liberal commentators, Yulia Latynina, has noted, if Bush had belonged to a different faith Putin would no doubt have shared an equally touching tale about “a piece of advice given by a wise rabbi.”)
In the six years since then, much has happened in Russia: first and foremost, a steady and brutal rollback of the freedoms gained since the start of glasnost in the late 1980s. Independent television has been obliterated; most of radio and the print press have been muzzled as well. The multiparty system has become an unfunny joke. Vocal critics of Putin have ended up in prison and, in several notorious cases, suspiciously dead. What’s more, Russia, an ostensible ally in the War on Terror, has used this alliance mostly to justify its military’s atrocities in Chechnya while refusing to back the U.S. on a wide range of foreign policy issues (mostly notably on sanctions against Iran). Anti-American hysteria has been rampant in the servile Russian press. In his speech last May commemorating Russia’s victory over Germany, Putin transparently suggested that the United States was seeking world domination in the same manner as the Third Reich.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is essentially saying President George Bush should “Hurry up and take it or leave it on my shield offer” — making you wonder what Bush will see now if he gazes into Putin’s eyes:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the U.S. should “hurry” to make a decision on his proposal to share a European missile shield.
Russia’s offer to deploy a radar warning and control system in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, a neighbor of Iran, is “the best of all solutions,” Putin said in an interview at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
“The U.S. should accept my proposal,” the Russian president said today, speaking in German. “They have to hurry up with their decision, I’m not giving them much time.” A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow couldn’t be reached for comment immediately.
It sounds like an ultimatum being presented as something less than an ultimatum and a stance that is unlikely to improve already cooling U.S.-Russian ties. MORE:
Putin, nine months from leaving office, made the offer to President George W. Bush at the Group of Eight Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, on June 7. The Russian proposal counters a U.S. plan to build missile-shield facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic. The U.S. says it needs the anti-missile system to protect Europe from attacks by “rogue states” such as Iran.
Putin’s comments today were “a reaction to the rather cool response in Washington to his Azerbaijan proposal,” said Yevgeny Volk, a political analyst in Moscow with the Heritage Foundation, by telephone.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said June 8 that the U.S. would “take a look” at the Russian proposal.
“You have to have a sense of what the missile defense system is trying to do and the optimum places to provide interceptors, place radars,” Rice said in comments posted on the State Department’s Web site. “It’s geometry and geography on how you intercept a missile, not a political decision.”
And what does Putin have to lose by taking this position? Not much:
“It’s a win-win situation for Russia,” said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst in Moscow. “If the U.S. accepts, it’s a victory. If the U.S. rejects it, Russia calls them aggressive and imperialistic.’”
And, above all, post-Communist Russia under Putin should not be perceived as one of the U.S.’ allies.
While President Bush was in the Czech Republic today extolling the virtues of democracy and chiding Russian Premier Putin for not living up to the high standards of the United States of America, this appeared in The New York Times:
The Bush administration’s attempt to create an alternative justice system for terrorism suspects, in the works for more than five years, has yet to complete a single trial.
After an earlier version of the system was rejected by the Supreme Court last year, the administration and Congress went back to the drawing board. The result was the Military Commissions Act, which was meant to settle a host of difficult questions once and for all.
But the system took two more blows yesterday, when, in separate proceedings, military judges dismissed charges against prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on the ground that the administration had not managed to comply with the new law it pushed through Congress just last fall.
![[Kommersant, Russia]](http://worldmeets.us/images/gatesputinrice_kommersant.gif)
![[The Telegraph, U.K.]](http://worldmeets.us/images/condiputinmissilepocket_telegraph.gif)
