Argumenty I Fakty: “Re-Recruiting”
How Medvedev and Putin won the information war
"I will never forget that night"
On September SEPTEMBER 12, Dmitry Medvedev had his first meeting with a large group of political scientists and journalists specialising in Russian affairs - participants in the international Valdai Discussion Club. It was essential for western experts to understand "who is Mr Medvedev", and hear information about the situation in the Caucasus first-hand.
The president said that the Caucasian crisis had dispelled any last illusions about the efficacy of the existing world order. "We must build a new security system. Otherwise, there is no guarantee that another Saakashvili will not ‘blow his top' at some moment and repeat what was done in August," the president said.
Mr Medvedev acknowledged that it was not a simple decision for him to use Russian troops to defend South Ossetia. "I can tell you frankly I will never forget that night ... "
"We did everything correctly. Far from feeling ashamed for the Russian troops, I am proud of them, because what they did was effective, symmetrical and proportionate, whatever others said," he said, summing up the military operation in the Caucasus.
The president did not deny that Russia has its zones of interest in the world. Russia will develop contacts with these countries, but not to the detriment of its relations with the Western community.
Journalists wanted to know the president's opinion about NATO's expansion and a global missile shield. Mr Medvedev answered: "Russia cannot feel comfortable in a situation in which military bases are concentrated and new missiles and counter-missiles continuously appear around it ... When my counterparts say: ‘Why are you creating a stir? They are not targeted against you', I reply that we have heard this a hundred times from our American and European colleagues. ... But they are targeted exactly against us, there cannot be any other way."
He admitted he did not consider the differences that have sprung up between Russia and the Western world to be a "dividing line" heralding a lengthy phase of confrontation. But some cooling, according to him, was evident and "the trust, which we lacked before, is now even less". Mr Medvedev stressed that Russia would never turn into a "militarised country behind an iron curtain." "I do not want to live in such a country. This would simply be monotonous and uninteresting."
"During the conversation the Russian leader was not afraid of showing emotion. His voice and the expression in his eyes oozed sincerity, and that won you over. At the same time, one clearly sensed that Medvedev was expecting an unbiased analysis from political commentators and an understanding for what Russia did and that he was not seeking sympathy or favour. I think he succeeded in both," American political analyst Nikolai Zlobin told "Argumenty i Fakty".
Tatyana Krasnova
After gaining a victory over Georgia in the fighting for South Ossetia, Russian authorities have accomplished success on another front - that of information.
"Did you want us to wave a penknife or shoot from a slingshot?" said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as he parried a stereotyped charge that Russia made disproportionate use of force in the Caucasus. These words were directed at a British journalist, one of the participants in the Valdai Club, but through him, Moscow tried for perhaps the hundredth time to convey its position to Western public opinion, which sided with Tbilisi from the start of the conflict.
It is enough to count the number of meetings, telephone conversations and interviews the president and the prime minister held to explain their policy to see that they spared neither time nor effort in penetrating the wall of misunderstanding in the West. Between August 8 and September 15, Dmitry Medvedev discussed the situation surrounding South Ossetia with foreign leaders over the phone at least 20 times. He spoke with French President Nicolas Sarkozy on 11 separate occasions (!), and on two occasions each with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Finnish President Tarja Halonen, as well as with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and leaders of Turkey and Italy (Mr Medvedev and Mr Putin both talked with Silvio Berlusconi). The president had two meetings with Nicolas Sarkozy and one with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The president and the prime minister met at length with Western political analysts and gave an unbelievable number of interviews to foreign media. Mr Medvedev, for example, answered questions put to him by CNN (U.S.), BBC (UK), TF1 (France), Al-Jazeera (Qatar), RAI (Italy) and Euronews, while Mr Putin was interviewed by CNN, Germany's ARD, and the newspaper Le Figaro. All interviewers focused on one and the same subject: Why did Russia "punch" Georgia on the nose? Why did it recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia? And was the world in for a new Cold War?
Constant dropping will wear away a stone - in other words, painstaking efforts to explain things eventually proved fruitful. At any rate, foreign media are no longer trying to scare their readers with reports of a Russian bear off its chain, but attempting to take an impartial look at the situation. Furthermore, political circles in the West lack their previous unity. At U.S. Congress hearings, Howard Berman, head of the House Foreign Relations Committee, described Mikheil Saakashvili's moves in South Ossetia as a gross and crude mistake. Another Congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, citing American intelligence reports, said Georgia was the one to start the conflict. He said that they, not the Russians, violated the truce and that the Russians, not the Americans, are right. He said Russia put an end to the war launched by the Georgians, while the George W. Bush administration was practicing double standards in its anti-Russian rhetoric.
Although politicians like Rohrabacher still constitute the minority in the West, their coming to the fore is indicative. The information war is not yet lost, and it is too early to say that Russia's image has been damaged beyond repair.
