Word: putin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Months of infighting between Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev over Russia's budget ended on Monday - with Medvedev on top. At a meeting with senior government officials, the President announced a strikingly pessimistic set of spending priorities until 2012, based on conservative estimates suggesting that Russia will remain hampered by the economic crisis into next year and beyond...
...These comments by Putin should be taken very seriously," says Olexandr Paliy, a political analyst with the Institute of Foreign Policy at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Diplomatic Academy. "Russia is engaged in a propaganda war against Ukraine, designed to convince the West not to support Ukraine. Russia doesn't understand cooperation with equals, only with subordinates...
...Putin is not known for his tact when speaking of Russia's western neighbor, which declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In April 2008, a source told Russia's Kommersant newspaper how Putin described Ukraine to George Bush at a NATO meeting in Bucharest: "You don't understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state. What is Ukraine? Part of its territories is Eastern Europe, but the greater part is a gift from...
...These levers are likely to play a significant role in Ukraine's upcoming presidential elections, set for next January. Last time around, in 2004, Russia and Putin threw their weight behind then Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, whose initial victory was overturned after massive protests in Kiev against vote-rigging, which turned into the so-called Orange Revolution. This time, analysts say the Kremlin will probably diversify its approach, with support for both Yanukovych and previously hostile Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, President Yushchenko's former Orange ally...
...Russian leadership learnt one important lesson from 2004 - not to put all their eggs in one basket," says Trenin. Meanwhile, Russians and Ukrainians alike will be watching for Putin's next trenchant explanation from literary history...