Word: putin
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...Ajarians saw their livelihoods threatened. Government officials began resigning en masse, the police and army went over to Saakashvili's side, and Abashidze lost what little popular support he had. The Kremlin made no move to prop him up because Saakashvili had won the respect of Russian President Vladimir Putin by successfully balancing Russian and U.S. interests in the region. Arriving in Batumi to a hero's welcome early Thursday morning, Saakashvili thanked the Ajarians for their "unprecedented heroism and dignity." In Tbilisi, Nino Burjanadze, Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, told Time that Georgia had "shown the whole world...
...task of matching writer with subject. We turned first to our own staff and contributors. Cairo bureau chief Scott MacLeod, for example, wrote about the men behind the al-Jazeera network, Andrew Sullivan handled George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Moscow bureau chief Paul Quinn-Judge critiqued Vladimir Putin, Pico Iyer made the case for the Dalai Lama, and Belinda Luscombe interviewed Nicole Kidman. Many of the profiles, however, were written by people who are not journalists but who have special insights into our selections. In two cases our writers--Warren Buffett on Bill Gates and Bono on Burmese dissident...
...authority is unquestioned, his popularity overwhelming. Yet Russia's future under his stewardship is hazy. Four years ago, Putin's election was greeted as a symbol of renewal. Now Putin is increasingly seen, especially outside Russia, as personifying a restoration of the Soviet mentality, if not its menace...
...Putin's image is that of an energetic, forceful reformer. He has restored Russia's self-confidence after a miserable decade of chaos and humiliation. Yet the buoyant economy is held up by oil and natural-gas prices--which once made the Soviet Union seem like the way of the future, until prices collapsed. Putin has not used the boom to diversify the country's economic base. He claims victory in Chechnya but has only devastated the tiny republic, not pacified it. Hard-line Chechen secessionists are waging a pitiless war of urban terrorism in Moscow and elsewhere. Russia...
Meanwhile, truly menacing problems--one of the world's fastest-growing HIV/AIDS infection rates, negative population growth, pollution--are largely ignored. The overall picture is that of a risk-averse, cynical leader. Time is running out for Putin. If his second term goes the same way as his first, he will be remembered as the man who could have done great things but succeeded only in leading Russia down yet another historical blind alley. --By Paul Quinn-Judge