Word: putin
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...What Putin achieved in Slovenia he cemented on Sept. 11, when he was the first foreign leader to call the White House after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. With the President circling 35,000 ft. above Florida aboard Air Force One, Rice took the call. Putin said he knew U.S. forces were being placed on high alert but that he would order his own military to stand down - a break from cold war tradition, when any escalation of military activity by one side was seen as a potentially hostile move by the other...
...Bush's advisers say the key to his attitude adjustment regarding Putin was the two leaders' first encounter, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, last June; Bush decided within two hours of meeting him that Putin was a man he could trust. Bush's remarks - "I looked the man in the eye," he said, and "I was able to get a sense of his soul" - elicited snickers from journalists and grimaces from his advisers, who feared Bush was swooning over Putin the way they had accused Clinton of falling for Yeltsin. Former Clintonites rolled their eyes at the irony. "I've known Putin...
...Bush's effusions notwithstanding, the lovefest in Ljubljana was more a product of strategy than chemistry. At a White House briefing with outside experts before the summit, Bush telegraphed an intense desire for his first encounter with Putin to go smoothly. In the first few months after taking office, Bush was under constant assault by European allies for his unilateralist foreign policy, including his snubbing of Moscow. Among the signs of disrespect: the ouster from the U.S. of 50 alleged Russian diplomat-spies in March 2001, the five-month delay before setting a first Bush-Putin meeting, and the threat...
...Putin had his own agenda. Not long after he took over from Yeltsin in late 1999, the new Russian President began making overtures to the West, first to Blair and then to NATO. Faced with an economic crisis, Putin believed he had no choice but to speed Russia's integration into the world economy. To succeed, he would have to win over the leader of the world's only "hyperpower," as the U.S. is sometimes called in Russia. Before Ljubljana, says a former aide, Putin "devoured an enormous amount of information on Bush and everything related to him." He knew...
...Cozying up to America poses risks for Putin. His embrace of the West has critics in the military and elsewhere quietly grumbling that he has been "Gorbachevized," that he's selling Russia out in exchange for a pat on the head from the U.S. President. In a poll of Russians published last week in Izvestia, 52% of the respondents said they still view NATO as a threat to Moscow, while a newspaper sourly announced the arms accord with the headline Russia Has Lost the Nuclear War. Still, Putin has kept his generals happy by waging an aggressive and often brutal...