Word: kursk
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Putin's missteps during the Kursk affair--his silence and the fact that he stayed on vacation throughout the first week of the crisis--point to a disastrously weak staff and a total absence of feedback. Boris Yeltsin's Kremlin was usually surrounded by a network of former advisers or ministers who could always phone a key member of the Yeltsin staff or a family member and warn them when a policy was going badly wrong. Putin, who seems to trust only a tiny group of intimates, clearly does not have such a back channel...
...surprising that Putin does not think he mishandled the Kursk sinking. He has behaved in much the same way several times in the past six months, without anything like the repercussions he faced last week. The submarine casualty figure is roughly the number of soldiers who die every month in Chechnya, often under horrific circumstances. The Russian defense establishment follows the same information policy in that war--postpone the news as long as possible, then admit the details as gradually as the situation allows...
...claims of some Western analysts that the disaster has changed Russia in general and Putin in particular are wrong. Opinion polls indicate that he has suffered little damage from the botched rescue operation, and public disapproval will probably subside as fast as it blew up. What the Kursk has done, however, is confirm what makes Putin tick...
...interview Putin gave to state-controlled TV last week provided an eloquent illustration of his world view. After expressing a sense of responsibility and guilt for the loss of the Kursk, he quickly shifted to an attack on those who had criticized the operation. In the forefront of the "defenders of the sailors," Putin noted with irony, were those "who had assisted in the destruction of the army, the fleet and the state," people with villas in Spain and the South of France. This was an unsubtle jab at two tycoons--political wheeler-dealer Boris Berezovsky and media magnate Vladimir...
...picture that has emerged of Putin during the Kursk crisis is of a leader profoundly imbued with the political culture that has marked centuries of Russian history: the needs of the state always come first; individual concerns come a distant second. When forced by events--an election campaign or a televised tragedy--Putin will don a human face and show concern for the ordinary people. But left to himself, he is far happier in the embrace of his great love--the Russian state...