Russian President Vladimir Putin drives his car at the opening ceremony of the new tunnel at Adler-Krasnaya Polyana highway.
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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President Knocks Western Scholars off Course
// Propaganda
Russia President Vladimir Putin received Western experts on Russia from the so-called Valdai Club at his residence in Novo-Ogarevo yesterday. It was the third meeting of the kind. Putin again confirmed that he would leave office in 2008 and unexpectedly criticized the concepts of energy superpower and sovereign democracy, which the Kremlin uses to characterize his second term in office and which have cause irritation in the West recently. He also accused Europe and the United States of having double standards in international relations and being unwilling to take Russian interests into account.
The president spoke with the scholars over lunch. The conversation lasted over three hours. His guests noted that Putin was uninhibited and self-assured. “Even more uninhibited than last time,” said Timothy Colton, director of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. “I got the impression that he was getting ready for his departure.” The president confirmed once again that he was leaving office in 2008 because “stability cannot be maintained by one person” and because he will not make an exception to requirements of the Constitution and laws for himself.
The president chose not to answer questions about his successor and what he will do after leaving office, but he made it clear that he does not intend to join any party. He said that the three main problems his successor will face will be corruption, an undiversified economy and Russia's demographic decline. He considers the main accomplishments of his presidency the reestablishment of Russian territorial integrity, economic growth and the beginnings to solutions for social issues.
Putin urged experts to stopping using the phrase “energy superpower” in relation to Russia. “That's a conversation from the past,” the president said, adding he never used it. He also said that he had convinced his Western colleagues at the G8 summit that the Energy Charter, which does not take account of the interests of suppliers, has outlived its usefulness.
When asked to explain the meaning of “sovereign democracy,” he replied that “that is the business of political scientists, and I don't interfere with it.” He noted that the concepts of democracy and sovereignty belong to different spheres. Recently First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev similarly criticized the phrase, which was introduced into circulation by deputy head of the presidential executive staff Vladislav Surkov. Thus, the president has unexpectedly rejected two key phrases used by Kremlin-linked political scientists to describe Putin's Russia.
Putin spent the rest of the time criticizing the West. In particular, he made new accusations of double standards. According to Alexander Rahr of the German Foreign Policy Council, the Russian President said that the Kremlin would reconsider its policy toward former Soviet states if Kosovo was given the status of an independent state. “Only fools would refuse to see that the situations in Kosovo, South Ossetia and Abkhazia have the same basis. Everyone understands that we are right,” Rahr quoted Putin as saying. In an interview with Kommersant before the G8 summit, official representatives of the U.S. State Department strongly denied any link between Kosovo and the situation in Georgia. In response to a question about the anti-American campaign on Russian television, Putin commented on the sharp criticism of Russia in the American press.
The WTO was mentioned only is passing, the scholars said. Putin accused the United States of being unwilling to compromise and said he was “extremely disappointed with that,” Kremlinologist Marshall Goldman said. Goldman said that Putin drew attention to the fact that Russia, unlike other countries, has not been allowed to form a lobbying group in the U.S. Congress. A day earlier, presidential aide Igor Shuvalov told a closed Valdai Club meeting that he considered further negotiations with the U.S. over Russian WTO accession in appropriate, since the issue was political and not technical. The failure of those negotiations, Shuvalov said, was a victory for the proponents of a strong anti-Western line in the Kremlin, that is, the so-called power bloc (siloviki in Russian).
Putin considers sanctions premature in Iran and urged that a diplomatic solution be found. He agreed, however, that calls for the annihilation of Israel weakened Tehran's negotiating position and said that it was “a thin line that is hard to follow” between peaceful and military uses of atomic energy.
In contrast to his total criticism of attitudes toward Russia in the West, the scholars were impressed with the animated tone with which Putin spoke about strengthening ties between Russia and Asian countries such as China, India and Thailand. “We have never had such string ties with China,” Rahr quoted the president. “And no one expected such dynamic development of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.” Putin again indicated that such development of contacts is impossible with the European Union, because Europe is afraid of competition with Russia and does not allow it into its markets.
Scholars at the meeting noted that, unlike in previous meetings, no important new announcements were made here. Russia's parting of ways with the West and the refusal to make Russia into a Western-style democracy seem like established facts already. There were practically no questions for the president about political freedoms in Russia. “There were fewer inconvenient questions,” Goldman noted. Another scholar who as at the meeting said that “I got the impression that the Putin era is ending.”
Mikhail Fishman
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 11, 2006
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