VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
Nothing could be more transparent than Vladimir Putin's project to return to the Kremlin. President Medvedev, the protégé who has lived up handsomely to every forecast that he would be his mentor's mouthpiece, submitted a Bill to the Duma yesterday to extend the President's term from four to six years, while still allowing for two consecutive terms. The legislative process has been unaccountably accelerated, so that an idea first floated in a speech last week could be law by Friday, with all three parliamentary readings compressed into one day.
Thank goodness, they might be thinking at the US State Department and the British Foreign Office, for the financial crisis. Were it not for the ever-blacker news about the Western world's economy, another scandal would be vying for the headlines - and one where the blame would be easier to apportion. It concerns our two countries' relations with Russia and the truth about this summer's Georgia-Russia war.
Very few Europeans know the EU has a "security strategy". Adopted five years ago, the document contains threat assessments ranging from terrorism to nuclear proliferation and organised crime. There are also passages about the need for the EU's neighbours to be well-governed so that problems don't spill over into the area, but nothing very specific.
Vladimir Putin must be given a great deal of credit for his dedication to the rule of law. He has gone to considerable trouble to have his legal fixer, Dmitry Medvedev, come up with the brilliant idea of amending the Russian constitution so the presidency could be extended from four to six years. Harvard Law School, eat your heart out! The amendment concept was introduced during President Medvedev's first state-of-the-nation speech last week.
It didn't take long for Russia to lay down a cold-war-tinged challenge for President-elect Barack Obama. One day after the election, the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, declared that he would put short-range missiles on Russia's border near Poland if the next American leader follows through on President Bush's plans to build a missile defense system in Europe.
Back in August, the conductor Valery Gergiev took the stage in Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, and denounced its "monstrous bombardment" by Georgia. Speaking both in Russian and, pointedly for the outside world, in English, he said Georgia had carried out a "huge act of aggression" and praised Russia as a savior. Then Mr. Gergiev - perhaps the world's most famous Ossetian - led the Kirov Orchestra of St. Petersburg in what was billed as a memorial concert for the dead in the five-day battle between the two countries.
If the two men who run Russia want to be seen by the world as democrats and not dictators, they are not doing a good job. On Wednesday, President Dmitri Medvedev announced his intention to amend the Yeltsin-era constitution to extend the presidential term to six years from four, igniting immediate speculation that the move would allow his mentor, Vladimir Putin, to return to the Kremlin for up to 12 years. The term of the Duma, Russia's parliament, would be lengthened as well.
Still Russia's dominant politician, Vladimir Putin can only relish the prospect of a new bout of Russian-US rivalry with American leader-in-waiting Barack Obama, say analysts.
W „Pierwszym kręgu" Sołżenicyna jest scena rozmowy dwóch zeków - Bobynina i Gerasymowicza - o „Rosji, która odchodzi". Ten ostatni wymienia charakterystyczne dla tego kraju typy ludzkie, które zostały zlikwidowane po przejęciu władzy przez komunistów. Konserwatyści, działacze państwowi, domorośli teologowie, raskolnicy, pątnicy z brodą po pas, chłopi powożący trojkami, zuchowaci kozacy i wolni włóczędzy.
There were elaborate explanations yesterday as to why the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, had chosen to greet the election of a liberal to the White House by deploying nuclear missiles in its western enclave of Kaliningrad. Russia, we were told, was laying down a marker. It was saying: you can not ignore us. Or Medvedev was testing a greenhorn leader to see how he would react. There was every explanation except the obvious one: cause and effect.
