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“We are losing ground to the Americans near our own borders”: interview with a Russian participant in Vilnius conference

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A Russian participant in the “Common Vision of Common Neighborhood” conference held in Vilnius, on May 3-5, shares his impressions with REGNUM.

REGNUM: After the speech of US Vice President Dick Cheney at the conference many experts began talking about the possibility of a new “cold war” between Russia and the US. How did the conferees react to this speech?

Perhaps, formally, Cheney did not directly criticize Russia, but the atmosphere at the forum, the talk in the lobby – everything was full of criticism. Three separate conferences were held in the framework of the forum, with each of them supposed to present its findings to the presidents. All of them discussed democracy development in two countries — Russia and Belarus. The findings of the NGO conference were the toughest: they put Russia and Belarus on the same level. However, none of the forums discussed democracy situation in Azerbaijan and Georgia! – even though they perfectly know that the situation there is far from ideal!

REGNUM: Isn’t it “double standards”?

In fact, it is. In the lobby the German and Scandinavian conferees also spoke about double standards, about the US’ dominance at the forum, but none of them said anything in public. And only the resolution of the youth forum said that “it is necessary to start democratization in Azerbaijan and other non-democratic regimes in Europe.”

REGNUM: Much has been said about the absence of Russia’s official representatives at the forum.

This fact was pointed out right after the official part of the conference. Lithuanian foreign ministry officials said they did send invitations to the high-ranking officials in Russia. Anyhow, the organizers refused to admit that our leaders could not simply discuss the problem of democracy development in their country in such an atmosphere. In late March Poland and Lithuania held “Russia-Europe” forum at the very same venue and Russian officials and experts took a very active part in it. And even though it also criticized Russia, the general tone was constructive. It was actually a discussion rather than just a one-sided expression of views.

REGNUM: But there were some Russians at the Vilnius Conference 2006.

It seemed to me that the organizers had invited only the Russians they wanted to listen to. Yervgeny Kiselyov, Andrei Piontkovsky, Andrei Illarionov, who spoke both at the conferences and at the summit itself, have long been openly critical of the situation in Russia. I am not saying that we have no democracy problems, but we have political experts who have more comprehensive vision of the situation. For example, Andrei Fyodorov, Sergey Karaganov, Andrei Zagorsky, Fyodor Lukyanov – they are not from the so-called “Kremlin pool,” that’s why, they are unbiased. Why didn’t the organizers invite them? Because they didn’t want acute discussions?

REGNUM: They say that the Vilnius Conference was “conducted” from Washington.

This was especially obvious in the lobby. Representatives of US organizations held consultations with delegates from Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, Baltic states, Belarus. No surprise, the findings of the conference were planned beforehand. I think that the non-mention of the uneasy situation with democracy in Georgia and Azerbaijan was due also to the US’ strong interests there. This was proved by the subsequent visit of Dick Cheney to Kazakhstan, where he said nothing about democracy but spoke much about ways to transport oil and gas bypassing Russia. No coincidence that “old” Europe representatives also noted that America is trying to consolidate the “anti-Putin coalition” by “promoting democracy to the East.” Probably, the Americans want to raise the problem of democracy in Russia at the St. Petersburg G8 Summit and are paving the way for this. It’s vexing that we are losing ground to the Americans near our own borders.

REGNUM: Are we actually losing it?

Everybody perfectly understands that this is a confrontation. America is active near our borders, but I guess that the US would feel very much uneasy if Russia held a conference in Latin America with representatives of Venezuela, Bolivia, Chili, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and if they discussed the problems of migrants in the US and the general democracy situation in America. Perhaps, we should do this?

http://www.regnum.ru/english/russia/639789.html