Austria -- Russian President Vladimir Putin answers journalists' questions in Vienna, 23May2007 (AFP) President Putin has said Russia could redirect its missiles to target Ukraine if Kyiv joined NATO. According to RFE/RL's guest authors, that kind of talk is representative of an increasingly truculent foreign policy, which goes largely unchallenged by Russia's political elite.
Over the past eight years, Russia's repression of its key domestic institutions has been a defining feature of its governance. The Kremlin's manipulation of Russia's recent parliamentary elections and presidential succession are the most recent examples of an ever-tightening grip on the country's political life.
What few have fully appreciated, however, is that the growing authoritarianism of Russia's domestic politics is shaping the parameters of its foreign policy. As President Vladimir Putin has consolidated control over the country's political opposition, civil society, and news media, independent voices of consequence have been muzzled and are no longer able to challenge or temper the whims and excesses of the Kremlin. This closing of ranks among an elite that has its hands on the levers of state and commercial power has created a dangerously insular system that produces public policy that does not undergo meaningful debate and scrutiny.
Russia's leadership has left few stones unturned in its effort to assert control over critical institutions. The strengthening of the instruments of the state to maintain political dominance has been especially visible in the business sector. The Kremlin under Putin has cleansed independent players from the commanding heights of the economy -- particularly the energy sector. Meanwhile, deep interlocking interests have taken hold within the Kremlin, much of whose leadership is "double-hatted" as state policy makers and stakeholders in some of the country's largest commercial (though state-controlled) enterprises.
In February, Viktor Zubkov, now prime minister, was named the highest-ranking public official on the list of candidates for Gazprom's board, suggesting that he will become Gazprom's next chairman, replacing Dmitry Medvedev, the current chairman, who is being guided into the Russian presidency. He joins numerous other officials with key corporate positions, including deputy head of the presidential administration Igor Sechin, who serves as chairman of the board at the state oil company Rosneft. This merger of outsized strategic commercial interests with those of senior Kremlin decision makers has subtracted from the foreign-policy-making equation the sorely needed range of voices that would be heard in an open and pluralistic system.
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