Word: putin
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...very of the moment. The British government's decision to protest Moscow's refusal to hand over Lugovoi by expelling four Russian diplomats is just the latest manifestation not only of an increasingly bad-tempered spat between two nations, but of the estrangement from the West of Vladimir Putin's Russia...
...There is wide speculation that Putin's idea of "immediate measures" will be to build up its forces in border areas now that it is free of the CFE treaty. Last month, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who increasingly positions himself as Putin's hawkish potential successor, said that Russia would deploy its newly tested Iskander-M cruise missiles in is westernmost Kaliningradsky region, wedged among Poland, Lithuania and Belarus, unless the U.S. scraps its defense shield bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. Ivanov's threats only infuriated Poland and made Lithuania consider asking the U.S. for deploying...
...Vladimir Ryzhkov, a democratic opposition leader and a rare independent member of the Duma, maintains that since the U.S. started this controversy by walking out of the ABM Treaty in 2002, there is a grain of truth in Putin's assertion that Russia was forced to respond. But Ryzhkov sees Putin's saber-rattling as "primarily an election-year message to the country: 'Your leader won't budge, no matter who formally becomes next President'." Polls show that this line works, Ryzhkov says: the Russians really...
...rest of the world may not. The European Union and NATO have already expressed their regrets about Putin's action. "It is a step in the wrong direction," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said in Brussels...
...fact, as no provision for a unilateral moratorium was built into the CFE treaty, Russia's action amounts to non-compliance, strictly speaking. It might indeed be designed for domestic consumption. Or it might be just an act of blackmail in Putin's new brinkmanship with the U.S. But it also might be serious water testing on his part to see how far he can stretch his empire-building muscle and get away with...