In a blunt newspaper commentary Monday, Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed concern about the more authoritarian direction of recent Russian policies at home and abroad under President Vladimir Putin.
His front-page commentary in Izvestia, appearing on the same day that Powell met with Putin and other top Russian officials, made indirect references to crackdowns on media freedom during parliamentary elections and the Oct. 25 arrest of billionaire oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Though couched in diplomatic language and praising improvements in the relationship in recent years, Powell’s article was designed to send Russia a powerful message in the wake of recent political developments that American officials think indicate a retreat from democratic principles.
Powell said that while the United States and Russia are friends, the relationship never would reach its potential unless both countries share the same principles. “That is why certain developments in Russian politics and foreign policy give us pause,” he wrote.
“Russia’s democratic system seems not yet to have found the essential balance among the executive, legislative and judicial branches,” he said. “Political power is not yet fully tethered to law. Key aspects of civil society–free media and political party development, for example–have not yet sustained an independent presence.”
He also wrote that “certain aspects of internal Russian policy in Chechnya and toward neighbors that emerged from the former Soviet Union have concerned us, too.” On Sunday, Powell criticized the presence of Russian troops in Georgia and Moldova.
“We recognize Russia’s territorial integrity and its natural interest in lands that abut it,” Powell wrote. “But we recognize no less the sovereign integrity of Russia’s neighbors and their rights to peaceful and respectful relations across their borders, too.”
Powell said he repeated his written concerns in his meetings with Putin and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, telling reporters with Ivanov at his side that “it wasn’t in any way an attempt on my part to interfere in internal dynamics of Russian political life. It was one friend speaking to another on matters before the world being talked about.”
Ivanov said Powell was given a “full and clear understanding” of Russia’s position on these issues and will express them to President Bush. “I do very much hope that many doubts that might have arisen with respect to some of these issues will be dispersed as a result,” he said.
Willing to negotiate
The foreign minister said Russia is willing to negotiate with the new Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, about Russia’s military bases in that country in an effort to find a solution “acceptable to both sides.” Ivanov and Powell attended Saakashvili’s inauguration Sunday in Tbilisi.
Putin did not mention the article in a friendly appearance with Powell. Putin said the U.S. and Russia have “technical differences” on international and “productive national interests,” but called the relationship “solid and strong.”
The Bush administration has grown increasingly concerned about the Kremlin’s commitment to democracy in the wake of Khodorkovsky’s jailing. His arrest was widely seen, in the U.S. and Russia, as Kremlin-engineered and motivated by politics.
Khodorkovsky, the former chief executive of Russia’s largest oil producer, Yukos, had been openly financing opposition parties before the parliamentary election in December. He also had crafted a strong oil lobby in parliament to block Kremlin initiatives.
Putin says the case against Khodorkovsky and Yukos is strictly a matter of law. Nevertheless, the Russian government has unleashed an attack on Yukos, freezing more than 40 percent of the company’s stock and placing on a “wanted list” two major Yukos shareholders who fled the country.
The Kremlin’s actions ultimately led to the collapse of a merger with another Russian oil company that would have turned Yukos into the world’s fourth-largest oil enterprise.
Washington also has sharply criticized Russia’s handling of the parliamentary election that gave Putin an overwhelming legislative majority. International observers dismissed the election as Kremlin-orchestrated. And the Bush administration has raised concerns about Putin’s crackdown on media freedoms last year that included the shutdown of Russia’s last independent television channel.
Little impact likely
Moscow political analysts said Monday that Powell’s remarks in Izvestia are likely to have little impact on Putin, who bristles at any attempt by the U.S. to weigh in on Russian domestic affairs.
“Putin wants to be allowed to do what he wants in his own country,” said Vladimir Pribylovsky, president of the Moscow-based Panorama think tank. “He will pretend to ignore these reproaches and will choose to keep silent.”
Powell’s critical remarks about Russia’s war with the breakaway republic of Chechnya marked a rare instance in which the Bush administration opted to chide the Kremlin about its policy in the war-torn southern Russian province.
Before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., Washington frequently criticized Moscow for regularly violating the human rights of Chechen civilians in the small province, which has been waging a separatist rebellion for a decade. However, since Sept. 11, the U.S. has muted its criticism of Putin’s handling of the Chechen war, even though human-rights groups argue that instances of Russian troops abducting and killing Chechen civilians persist.
Putin has tried to bring peace to Chechnya through the establishment of a constitution and elections, but international observers accused the Kremlin of rigging last autumn’s election of a pro-Moscow president, Akhmad Kadyrov. And a series of Chechen suicide bombings last year that killed hundreds of people in Moscow and southern Russia have raised concerns among Russians about the Kremlin’s ability to safeguard the country against terrorist acts.
“The Chechen situation is putting Putin in an awkward situation,” said Viktor Kremenyuk, a foreign affairs analyst for the Moscow-based Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies. “It’s becoming a permanent embarrassment for him.”
The Kremlin has shut two of its military bases in Georgia but has reneged on its commitment to close the remaining two.
