Word: putin
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...democratic mettle of President Dmitri Medvedev was put to its greatest test this month. Perhaps naively, many of the country's liberals had believed that Medvedev, a doe-eyed and often bashful technocrat, would finally rise up to challenge the unrivaled dominance of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. After all, they thought, he is technically the commander in chief of the country and he has cultivated the image of a reformer intent on bringing true democracy to Russia. But in the wake of rampant fraud allegations in local elections, Medvedev yet again disappointed the hopeful...
...state of democracy in Russia. In a breach of the usual Kremlin protocol, Medvedev wrote a policy paper - a liberal manifesto of sorts - that was published in September on the independent news website gazeta.ru. It was seen by many to be a groundbreaking document. Although Medvedev did not criticize Putin overtly - that would have been political suicide - he did lament Russia's isolationism, its vulnerable economy and its "negative democratic tendencies," all jabs at the authoritarian political system that Putin cultivated during his eight years as President. (See pictures of Vladimir Putin on vacation...
...such system has ever really existed in Russia, and none had ever been promised in such terms. Talk-show hosts and columnists nearly lost their heads interpreting the paper. Was Medvedev actually taking a stand against Putin? Were they preparing to face off for the presidency in 2012? In the weeks that followed, nearly every public intellectual responded to the piece, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and oil mogul Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had been stripped of his assets and imprisoned under Putin for fraud. Most of them were skeptical. "It is absolutely clear that one leader cannot modernize...
...Putin enjoys the largest support base in Russia, with his political party, United Russia, controlling 315 of the 450 seats in the Duma. Medvedev's manifesto implied that the party's super-majority would eventually need to be broken up and its control of the bureaucratic machinery dissolved. This prospect, though seemingly impossible, provided opposition leaders with a rallying cry heading into elections on Oct. 11 to choose representatives in 76 of the country's 83 regional governments...
...Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called a fourth round of sanctions "counterproductive" and reaffirmed Moscow's commitment to continuing diplomatic talks with Tehran. Lavrov's statement came just three weeks after Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signaled an openness to sanctions. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, declared that it was too early to scrap negotiations, telling reporters, "There is no need to scare the Iranians." Though the U.S. has insisted on keeping sanctions on the table, Clinton conceded that Russia is "not at that point...