By Dan Shea Jul 3, 2007, 5:03 GMT
Moscow - Global trade, climate change and Africa were supposed to be the main items on the agenda for the Group of Eight (G8) summit last month in Heiligendamm, Germany.
But for many, the focus of the event was a meeting between US President George W Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
As the world's largest producer of natural gas and second-biggest oil exporter, Russia's economy has boomed amid soaring energy prices, and the Kremlin has made it clear it is ready to reclaim some of the geopolitical heft it lost in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And while the West - preoccupied with Iraq, the Middle East and internecine bickering - has paid little attention to Russia until recently, Russia has forged a clear new line for dealing with Europe and the United States: not backing away from its own interests.
'The Russian political elite is looking for ways to integrate in the world elite, but on its own terms, without harm to its authority or to its control over financial flows,' Dmitry Shusharin, political commentator for state-run agency RIA-Novosti, said last month.
That new self-assertion has put it on a collision course with the US and the European Union on issues ranging from energy to arms control.
At Heiligendamm, sparks flew as Russia and the US clashed over US plans to build a missile-defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Even before the summit, Putin had hinted that Russian missiles could be directed at European cities in response to the shield.
And last month, Yury Baluyevsky, one of Russia's military chiefs, said if Washington did not provide a quick answer to a compromise proposed by Russia, it would be clear 'for whom and against whom' the shield is directed - meaning Russia.
The missile shield is a major, but not the only, point of friction between Moscow and the West these days.
Russia has demonstrated its opposition to Western-backed plans for the independence of the Serbian province of Kosovo and called a moratorium on a Soviet-era treaty limiting troop numbers in Europe.
And after repeated attempts to forge a new Russia-EU treaty stumbled over Polish objections to a Russian ban on Polish food imports, the West has appeared to be at a loss about how to approach its newly-assertive rival.
US Senator Joseph Biden last month said the Kremlin had 'repeatedly and successfully outmanoeuvred the West in recent years,' arguing for an EU-US strategy on improving ties with Moscow.
Politicians from East and West have issued assurances that there is no threat of a 'second Cold War.'
But behind the diplomatic manoeuvring, the mounting tensions are impossible to ignore.
Sixteen years ago, the collapse of the Soviet Union led to what many Russians see as the darkest moment in recent history as the economy crashed, the rouble was devalued and corrupt privatization schemes funnelled billions of dollars into a few men's hands.
Putin famously called that collapse the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.'
And recent surveys, carried out by the All-Russia Centre for the Study of Public Opinion and the Levada Centre respectively, showed that 68 per cent of Russians regret the Soviet collapse, and that most think Putin's greatest achievement since coming to power in 2000 has been the strengthening of Russia's international status.
'Over a period of about 15 years, an unspoken taboo existed on words (like motherland and fatherland),' the Levada Centre's Alexei Levinson told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty last month.
With the 'complex processes of the country's development' during Putin's second term, that time has passed, he added.
But with feelings of national pride rising, average Russians remember with nostalgia the global influence Soviet Moscow was able to peddle - and have little patience with what they see as Western schemes to keep them at the edge of the world stage.
'Russians think Americans don't understand how difficult the last 15 years have been for Russian society, that Americans are a little too quick to lecture,' and don't want to see a Great Power in Russia, US Ambassador to Russia William Burns said last month at a speech in Moscow.
US citizens, he added, 'have not been shy about expressing concerns about the over-centralization of power in Russia and how that power is sometimes used in relations with some of Russia's neighbours.'
The greatest challenge in the years ahead, he added, will be for the two sides to understand 'how much (they) matter to one another.'
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average russianJul 4th, 2007 - 04:15:10
If we knew in 1990 how deceitful, cruel, hypocritical West really is, USSR would still exist. We were naive...
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average russianJul 4th, 2007 - 04:15:10
If we knew in 1990 how deceitful, cruel, hypocritical West really is, USSR would still exist. We were naive...
Report this comment