Word: vladimir
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...activities in several Georgian provinces: Abkhazia, Ajaria and, of course, South Ossetia. It has sponsored rebellious governments in these territories, armed their forces and even bestowed Russian citizenship on the secessionists. These efforts have intensified since the emergence in Georgia of a democratic, pro-Western government. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's resentment toward Georgia and its President, the U.S.-educated Mikheil Saakashvili, has seemingly become a personal obsession...
...states is at risk. Russia seems committed to the notion that there should be some sort of supranational entity, governed from the Kremlin, that would oversee much of the former Soviet territories. This attitude reflects in part the intense nationalistic mood that now permeates Russia's political élite. Vladimir Putin, former President and now Prime Minister, is riding this nationalist wave, exploiting it politically and propagating it with the Russian public. Some now even talk of a renewed Russian military presence in Cuba as a form of retaliation against the U.S. for its support of the independence...
...sure what the answer is, to be honest. But I do know this: the anger fueling Russia's behavior now is very real, and I know exactly where it comes from. Just a couple of months ago, in Moscow, I sat in the office of Vladimir Yakunin, whose official public role is chairman of the state-owned Russian Railroad company. That sounds like a pretty innocuous job, but it's misleading in this sense: Yakunin is an old St. Petersburg crony of Putin's and, like the Prime Minister, is widely believed to have been a career KGB field officer...
...idea that Vladimir Putin's primary impulse is to try to reassemble the Soviet Empire is one that much of the U.S. foreign policy establishment has resisted. This despite the fact that in Ukraine in 2004, Russia tried to do what it could to tip the presidential election to its approved candidate - including, many believe, poisoning with dioxin the eventual winner, Viktor Yushchenko. Just over a week ago, traveling in Central Asia for a future TIME story, I asked a senior Western official about the likelihood that the tense Russia-Georgia standoff over South Ossetia could escalate. The source acknowledged...
Suffice to say that Vladimir Yakunin - and no doubt his friend, the Prime Minister - didn't approve, and that disgraceful moment sticks in his craw to this day. The Russians are back - and they are not buffoons, thank you. Now, oil and gas wealth plus increasing military might are going to right what they perceive as the humiliations of the recent past. The New Cold War, as Ed Lucas writes...