Word: putin
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Russia's President Vladimir Putin, a judo champion in his youth, is now building up his political muscles. He flexed them ostentatiously in his annual address to Russia's Federal Assembly on April 26, grabbing headlines with his threat to reconsider his country's adhesion to the treaty on conventional forces in Europe. Signed by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, the treaty committed the U.S.S.R, and later the Russian Federation, to reducing its military deployment in its European territories. Given that this deal was one of the landmark indications that the cold war was over, why would Putin want to provoke...
...Putin's threat is a pointed response to the U.S. decision to install missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. The American justification is that NATO needs to extend its defenses against a potential attack from Iran, but few Russians accept that argument. Poland and the Czech Republic are a vast distance from Iran, so Russian public opinion needs little persuasion by the Kremlin to worry that NATO's true aim is to line up bases against Russia. Such fears have been growing since the mid-1990s. Presidents Gorbachev and Yeltsin had never imagined that NATO would recruit...
...things are very different. Under Putin, Russia has used fuel rather than military power as its weapon in trying to quell attempts by Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia to wriggle free of its tutelage. The Russian authorities have hinted that countries in Western Europe ought to avoid annoying them, too. Exports of gas and oil, moreover, have balanced the Russian budget and enabled the government to take unprecedented initiatives, which Putin mentioned in his address. As billions of petrochemical dollars pour into the nation's coffers, he seeks to reinvigorate its scientific base. The down-at-heels research institutes...
...Russian President has avoided explaining any new "national idea." This was a dig at the late Boris Yeltsin, who was forever re-explaining what he thought about Russia's destiny. Putin says he does not intend to release a political testament before he steps down in 2008. He insists that what counts is not rhetoric but action...
...option if those two nations agree to a U.S. proposal to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic. "I think that was an extremely unfortunate comment," Rice said during a stop in Berlin. Unfortunate, perhaps, but hardly isolated. On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin announced he would suspend his nation1s compliance with a post-Cold War treaty limiting conventional arms in Europe, due in large part to the oozing eastward of the U.S. missile shield...