Recently we have witnessed a flurry of high-profile and contradictory statements on the Russian state. In a role reversal, Russia’s leaders have been abnormally candid while several prominent western politicians and pundits have lavished undeserved praise.
Russian president Dmitri Medvedev was bold enough last week to state that democracy is irrelevant to the Group of Eight [...]

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KUEHLUNGSBORN, Germany: It is Vladimir Putin’s eighth and probably final summit with leaders of the world’s richest democracies, but with his blunt anti-Western statements and threats of a new arms race the Russian leader looks increasingly alienated among his Group of Eight colleagues.
Before heading to the summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, Putin took his bellicose rhetoric [...]

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This week’s Group of Eight summit in Germany may be the last, or almost the last of its kind. When this process began in the mid-1970s, the five founding members of the United States, Japan, Germany, France and Britain were without question the world’s richest and most important industrial democracies.
Italy and Canada were then brought [...]

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Putin has already roiled the waters. He threatened to retarget select European cities with nuclear weapons (AP) if plans for deployment of a U.S. missile defense system go ahead and warned of a “new arms race.” Russia’s “sharp decline” in standing and reputation with the West forms the backdrop to this year’s G8 meeting, says [...]

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MOSCOW, June 4 (Itar-Tass) - In an interview with reporters from G8 states Russian President Vladimir Putin called “another stupidity” talks about expelling Russia from G8 for allegedly deviating from liberal values in its development.
“I would say it is another stupidity, and maybe a wish to attract attention, maybe a wish to reach some [...]

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Russia’s membership of G8 is becoming awkward. If it were not for Vladimir Putin’s presence at the table at the annual summit, the principal topic of conversation would be him.
Relations between Russia and the West are at their worst since the end of the Cold War. There have always been arguments about Nato expansion, human [...]

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While the G-8 dithers with global warming, every day brings us closer to a nuclear-armed North Korea and Iran. One of the world’s two largest proliferators, Russia, is an esteemed member of the G-8 club. The other menace to peace is China, which has paid no price for its reckless support of Kim Jong-il and [...]

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Far from being a show of unity by some of the world’s richest nations, next week’s G-8 summit could fast deteriorate into a slanging match between the US and Russia. That, at least, was what happened when the G-8 foreign ministers gathered in Germany on Wednesday.
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