Word: putin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Moscow has responded to the new alignments of its former satellites by using energy supplies for geopolitical leverage, and Putin threatened to aim nuclear missiles at Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Poland if they host the U.S. missile-defense system. Russia is also playing a cat-and-mouse game with Georgia: Early last month, Putin eased his blockade of the country and resumed air and sea transportation links, severed in October 2006 over the arrest of Russian personnel by the Georgians on suspicion of espionage. At the same time, Russia has invoked "the Kosovo precedent" to turn up the heat...
...support, however, prospects for Georgia and Ukraine's accession to NATO look bleak as long as key Western European powers such as Germany and France remain leery of antagonizing Russia, their major energy supplier. Accepting NATO's admission of tiny Croatia and making concessions on missile defenses might be Putin's offering by way of a sweetener for a compromise with President Bush. Last month, the Russian leader said he had received a letter from Bush that had helped achieve "final agreements" on some differences, and that now Russia and the U.S. were ready to complete the details...
...Putin is keeping his options open, though. Last week, Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, said that the latest U.S. proposals on missile defense in Europe "do not satisfy our security requirements." That could simply be raising the ante in the bargaining process, but it also creates a fallback position should Putin fail to achieve his desired results on Georgia and Ukraine during the Bucharest summit...
...fertile for a compromise simply because neither Moscow nor Washington is in a position to achieve all of its goals. Responsible Russian officials don't believe U.S. interceptors in Poland will threaten the deterrent power of Russian ICBMs that would travel over the North Pole, rather than westward. And Putin likely realizes that the U.S. is unlikely to be dissuaded from deploying missile defense in Europe, just as Bush is likely to discover that he will have trouble getting the necessary backing from Western European allies on admitting Georgia and Ukraine as long as Russia remains so strongly opposed...
...Hence the appeal, for Putin at least, of a compromise accepting the presence of the missile shield on its borders in exchange for keeping its southern neighbors out of NATO. It remains to be seen, however, whether President Bush - who talked passionately on Tuesday about the need for NATO to admit Georgia and Ukraine - is ready to split the difference...