Russian leader newly combative, defiant
By DOUGLAS BIRCH, Associated Press Writer Sat Apr 28, 8:41 PM ET
MOSCOW - As Vladimir Putin enters what could be the last year of his presidency, he has become more defiant of international pressure and more willing to challenge the United States and Europe.
Russia's affluence and stability, fueled by high oil prices, have given him the confidence to confront the West and to try to reassert the nation's influence as a world power. But Western critics warn the Kremlin's new assertiveness reflects renewed imperial ambitions and threatens its neighbors.
Either way, the world appears to be entering a new period of accusation and acrimony in East-West relations — with fresh fractures now appearing in fault lines resembling those that marked the Cold War.
"The Russians don't want a return to the Cold War," said Andrew Kuchins, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "But on issues they care about, they're going to play harder ball."
In his state of the nation speech Thursday, Putin denounced what he said was foreign interference in Russia's internal affairs. Angered by a U.S. plan to place ballistic missile defenses in the Czech Republic and Poland, he threatened to walk away from an agreement that regulates the deployment of heavy non-nuclear weapons around Europe.
The Russian leader also rattled Washington in February with a closely watched and bellicose speech in Munich, accusing the United States of an "overly aggressive American foreign policy."
Russia has increased prices of oil and gas in the face of defiance from former Soviet states, briefly cutting off supplies in some cases.
European officials watched the disruptions with growing concern about Russia's reliability as an energy supplier. The United States and others in the West have accused Russia of trying to use its vast energy resources as a political weapon.
Some analysts say Putin has sought to turn back the clock by embracing the great power politics of the 19th century. Only this time, the Kremlin seems prepared to rely mainly on its economic clout and energy resources, rather than military force, to influence its neighbors.
Given Putin's overwhelming popularity at home, his successor — who is scheduled to be elected in March 2008 — is likely to be similarly combative.
Dmitri Trenin, a scholar with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said Russia's new assertiveness is the logical result of the trauma it suffered after the Soviet collapse.
Putin's criticism of the West "kind of clears the air," he said, by demanding Russia's opinions be respected. That follows a decade when the Kremlin felt powerless in its dealings with the West in general and the United States in particular.
"There are three models of United States-Russian collaboration, at least as seen by Putin," Trenin said in a recent interview. "The Gorbachev period can be summarized as attempts at partnership through concessions. The Yeltsin period, as partnership through submission. Putin wants a partnership built on competition."
From the Soviet collapse through the end of Putin's first term in office, analysts said, Russia could do little more than complain as NATO expanded into Eastern Europe and the Baltic nations, and Western influence grew across the states of the former U.S.S.R. That changed following Putin's re-election in March 2004.
"This time, under Putin II, they are resisting that openly and firmly," Trenin said.
Neither has Russia, as many hoped, adopted Europe's political and social norms — in particular, a commitment to political pluralism.
"That is not happening," he said. "Russia is not going down the path of Europeanization."
Moscow's new aggressive posture abroad, many foreign analysts agree, is possible partly because of the perception that U.S. global influence has been weakened by the
Iraq war.
It's also due to the growing confidence that Russia has from its robust trillion-dollar, oil-fueled economy, which has averaged 6.7 percent annual growth since the disastrous financial crisis of 1998.
Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister who is now a pro-Western opposition leader, says in an article in the current edition of the influential journal Foreign Affairs that joint action is required by the West to blunt Moscow's "imperial ambitions."
"The Russia that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day 1991 came with borders that reflect no historical precedent," Tymoshenko wrote. "Accordingly, Russia is devoting much of its energy to restoring political influence in, if not control of, its lost empire."
The Russian Foreign Ministry on April 16 took the extraordinary step of responding directly to Tymoshenko's article, denouncing it as "a kind of anti-Russian manifesto and an attempt to once again draw dividing lines in Europe and return the world as a minimum into the Cold War atmosphere."
Russian leader newly combative, defiant
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