Word: vladimir
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Even after he was elected Russia's President last March, Vladimir Putin remained a riddle. Was he really, as his own staff members whispered, a cautious reformer who had learned his stuff in St. Petersburg during the early years of perestroika? Or was he the product of his training and times--a middle-level KGB officer whose views had been formed during a period when the Soviet Union seemed, on the surface at least, a mighty power? Thanks to the Kursk submarine debacle, which cost 118 lives, the guessing game is over. Putin is a gosudarstvennik--a believer...
...sailors," Putin noted with irony, were those "who had assisted in the destruction of the army, the fleet and the state," people with villas in Spain and the South of France. This was an unsubtle jab at two tycoons--political wheeler-dealer Boris Berezovsky and media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky...
...exercise in which the Kursk was lost reflected President Vladimir Putin's declared intention to rebuild the navy at least to the levels of the French and British fleets, if not to the size and might of the U.S. Navy. It was intended as a dress rehearsal for a show-of-force cruise of the eastern Mediterranean later this year to be led by the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and the battle cruiser Peter the Great. Losing the Kursk is a major setback for these plans and for Putin's naval ambitions. "He has aligned himself personally with the revival...
...quite. For crucial days, Russian officials had rejected Western offers of help, including the dispatch of U.S., French, British and Norwegian rescue equipment. Then on Wednesday, Putin ordered Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, the navy commander in chief, to accept help. The Russians promptly invited Norway and Britain to send equipment, but by then it was already a near certainty that any survivors would perish before the rescuers could reach the area. Indeed, shortly before the British team arrived on Saturday, the Northern Fleet commander said, "The critical line of survivability has been closed...
...bombings have played an important role in Russian politics. Last fall's barrage triggered the most dramatic political changes in Russia since 1991. The attacks--and the war they engendered--thrust then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin into a role of unexpected prominence and eventually into the presidency of Russia. That chain of events has also provided rich ground for a whole crop of conspiracy theories: that the bombs were planted by ex-KGB goons trying to push Putin into power, for instance. Some Muscovites and many liberal Russians are worried that the Pushka killings will become a precursor...