From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 5/13/2006 12:40 AM
Prodding the bear

Leader
Saturday May 13, 2006
The Guardian

Back in the bad old days of the cold war, western Kremlinologists used to earn their keep by interpreting impenetrable data about Soviet five-year plans, Pravda editorials or the pecking order of politburo gerontocrats on the Red Square reviewing stand. No such expertise is required to decode the meaning of what Vladimir Putin has been saying recently. In his annual state of the union address this week, the Russian president sniped openly at US complaints about his democratic credentials and warned that the country must modernise its armed forces to be able to withstand foreign pressure. Two days earlier, he failed to even mention the western allies at the Moscow ceremony marking the anniversary of the victory over Nazism in the second world war.

Much of what Mr Putin said was about domestic issues, calling for investment to boost growth and measures to reverse a declining birth rate. But it was his dismissive riposte to the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, which attracted most attention. Speaking in Lithuania, Mr Cheney prodded the bear by regretting Russia's backsliding on democracy and warned it not to use its energy might at a time of record prices for "intimidation or blackmail" against its neighbours. That was the harshest public criticism of Russia yet from the Bush administration. Russia-bashing plays well in Washington, especially as ratings for the president reach new lows. Nor did it escape notice that Mr Cheney was far less negative about Kazakhstan, a US client where oil is cheaper than human rights. Still, there was substance enough to his comments, reflecting a belated admission that Mr Bush's trusted ally in the "war on terror" has ensured, through Chechnya, the Yukos affair and a crackdown on NGOs and the media, that Russia's democracy is still a carefully "managed" one.

Nostalgics apart, no one believes that Russia has any real claim to be the global titan it once was, though it is still a nuclear-armed, veto-wielding member of the UN security council and thus a key player on issues like Iran. But its oil and gas reserves have given it a clout it could only dream of in the dying days of the Soviet Union, as Mr Putin recognises with his use of the term "energy superpower".

The first real sign that this was more than just semantics came in January, when Russia shut down its gas pipeline to Ukraine after the man it backed had been defeated by the "Orange" candidate in the presidential election - though this also meant shortages in Austria, Italy and Germany. Now the state-controlled exporter Gazprom has threatened to cut supplies to worried EU governments and seek new markets in Asia unless they let it gobble up companies such as Britain's Centrica. Economic pressure has been used openly against Georgia and Moldova, where Russia still meddles in the old Soviet "near abroad". Even the Germans are uncomfortable with the way Moscow props up Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus - using heavily subsidised gas to keep his people from challenging what the Americans call Europe's "last dictatorship". Only yesterday Mr Putin welcomed President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, almost a year since hundreds died in the Andijan massacre.

The Putin-Cheney exchanges hardly constitute a new cold war, as some claim, though there is a distinct nip in the summer air. It seems certain to be felt at the G8 summit in St Petersburg in July, when Mr Putin is hoping for progress on Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organisation. The Kremlin has hired a slick PR firm to improve its image. The problem is that image and reality will have to coincide more closely for such a campaign to have much effect. Churchill once quipped that Russia was "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma". It's a memorable line, but no longer a useful one. For what's going on these days is now fairly clear - and fairly alarming.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1774071,00.html