President Dmitry Medvedev’s address to the Federal Assembly had two principal political surprises, one internal and one external. Medvedev announced that the present Russian constitution, adapted by referendum in December 1993, would be amended to increase the term of office of president from four to six years and the parliamentary term from four to five [...]

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Fresh doubt was cast on the future of Dmitry Medvedev as Russia’s president Thursday after a report suggested that he could step down next year to pave the way for Vladimir Putin’s return.
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Successful states may generate trouble, but failures produce catastrophes: Nazi Germany erupted from the bankrupt Weimar Republic; Soviet Communism’s economic disasters swelled the Gulag; a feckless state with unpaid armies enabled Mao’s rise.
Putin might treat sick economy with war.
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Wonder why Russia has Europe over a barrel? Ask German environmentalists.
Two decades of stringent environmental regulations have made Germany, Europe’s largest economy, increasingly dependent on natural gas from Russia, the world’s largest exporter. Of course, economic leverage translates seamlessly into political power, and Russia’s sway over German foreign policy has been conspicuous as the recent [...]

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He’s an ethnic nationalist with a mystical sense of Russian destiny. Cold and pragmatic, he won’t play by the world’s rules.
Does this ruthless, focused leader have a weakness? Yes: his temper. Despite his icy demeanor, Putin’s combustible. He takes rebuffs personally and can act impulsively — and destructively. Instead of lulling Europeans into an ever-greater [...]

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The hysteria over the expected arms deal between Russia and Syria should be directed elsewhere. Israel may indeed find it harder to strike Syria every time it feels like “sending a message” to Damascus. What should worry Jerusalem more, however, is the fact that it, and Syria, are now at the center of the great [...]

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A Russian-Venezuelan axis is a 21st-century throwback to the Cold war Soviet-Cuban alliance. Such a partnership bodes ill for energy security, for freedom in both nations, and for the Western Hemisphere.
Despite differences in culture, language, and geography, the rulers of Russia and Venezuela are increasingly rejecting civil society and narrowing political space in their respective [...]

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EXCLUSIVE: A former Soviet spymaster writes for the Sunday Herald
THE?LATE?ALEXANDER LITVINENKO once spoke to?me?about?Putin’s strategic plan for damaging Western democracy and reducing it to the level of what passes for democracy in Russia. I believe that this plan is already being successfully accomplished. For proof, just look at how all Western leaders are today happy [...]

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An inside look at the Russian leader’s autocratic regime and his turn away from the West
In 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin, an all-but-unknown former KGB officer, as his successor. Putin imposed a discipline on Russia that had been absent since the Soviet Union’s collapse, and he ushered in the beginnings of prosperity [...]

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My impression is that a new phase of Russian politics is under way. The statement that the president designs foreign and security policy, and the prime minister implements parts of it, has become the mantra of Russian officials from Medvedev and Putin down. I encountered no Russian in or out of government who doubted that [...]

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Putin may be endangering Russia’s future by revisiting the past.
The Byzantine Empire fell in 1453. But you wouldn’t know it in Russia, where Vladimir V. Putin has been behaving as though the 15th century never ended, as though he is the direct descendant of the Byzantine kings and Moscow remains the “Third Rome” it declared [...]

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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin compared the U.S. to a “frightening monster” and urged France to distance itself from its American ally.
“How can one be such a shining example of democracy at home and a frightening monster abroad?” Putin said in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde transmitted live to journalists in Paris yesterday. [...]

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It’s hard to take Medvedev/Putin’s complaints seriously about the American missile defense system in Europe while they help arm a China that might turn on them at any time.
Of course, I can’t help but bring up the fact that Russia has helped Iran create the missile problem in the first place. Russia has long been [...]

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But in today’s Russia, journalists don’t press top officials. In fact, apart from the interviews with Gevorkyan and Kolesnikov, Putin, as president, never publicly faced a single unfriendly question from a Russian reporter.
During Putin’s tenure, television broadcasting was honed to perfection — as a tool to shape public opinion. Coverage of political and public affairs [...]

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In their concise and eloquent report, Nemtsov and Milov present a devastating picture of Putin’s eight years in the Kremlin. Indeed, the report’s appraisal of Putin and his administration is so damning that the Kremlin attempted, with considerable success, to block its distribution. Originally, the publisher, Novaya Gazeta (which produces the newspaper of the same [...]

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JUDGING from the news lately, Russia is well on its way to restoring that old Evil Empire image. Military parades have returned to Red Square. Key businesses are choked by corruption or are under state control. Journalists who probe too deeply turn up dead. And critics of the Kremlin are jailed, pushed out of elections [...]

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Despite the fact that Putin’s Russia is increasingly autocratic and irredeemably corrupt, the man himself - their born-again Tsar - is overwhelmingly regarded as the answer to the nation’s prayers.
Russia has a bloody and tormented history. Its centuries of suffering - its brutalities, its wars and revolutions, culminating in the collapse of communism and the [...]

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ON a frigid evening in February, the hottest place to be here was the Kremlin Palace theater. The draw inside the towering hall wasn’t Tina Turner or Deep Purple — rock icons well past their prime — but Gazprom, Russia’s most powerful corporate leviathan, which was celebrating its 15th anniversary.
Gazprom certainly had reason to party: [...]

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Dmitry Medvedev may be the new president, but his predecessor is still the one with power.
We can expect a few proclamations and perhaps even token policy changes. Unfortunately, the early signs show that Medvedev’s statement about developing civil freedoms and ending “legal nihilism” were only a show for the West. Such displays are needed to [...]

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When Boris Yeltsin left the Kremlin eight years ago, he gave Vladimir Putin the pen he had used to sign important documents and decrees, a gesture symbolizing the transfer of power to Russia’s new president. When Putin left the Kremlin, he took the pen with him. Putin, who became prime minister Thursday, has signaled that [...]

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Dmitry Oreshkin, a Russian political analyst, says beefing up the Victory Day parade is just one of many steps that Putin has taken toward resurrecting the hallmarks of the Soviet empire and the country’s former glory.
“He gives free rein to the Soviet dream,” Oreshkin says. “The huge number of people who were brought up in [...]

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