CDI Russia Weekly-#168
24 August 2001
Edited by David Johnson
Center for Defense Information
1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington DC 20036
phone: 202-332-0600; fax:202-462-4559
djohnson@cdi.org

The CDI Russia Weekly is an e-mail newsletter that carries news and
analysis on all aspects of today's Russia, including political, 
economic, social, military, and foreign policy issues. With support
from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the MacArthur Foundation,
CDI Russia Weekly is a project of the Washington-based Center for Defense 
Information (CDI), a nonprofit research and education organization. 

Web Version: http://www.cdi.org/russia/168.html

CDI Russia Weekly Home (with archive): http://www.cdi.org/russia/

Contents:

1.  AFP: Bush vows to drop ABM 'on our timetable.'
2.  UPI: Joseph Boris, Analysis: Wide river between U.S., Russia.
3.  Moscow Times: Pavel Felgenhauer, Keep Deterrence.
4.  Vremya Novostei: Yekaterina Kats, THE DRAGGED-OUT ROMANCE.
    The Russian-American plutonium program has been postponed. 
5.  www.americans-world.org: American public attitudes on Russia.
6.  MSNBC: Michael Moran, Dangerous liaison. A new pact between Russia
    and China begs more scrutiny.
7.  The Russia Journal: Andrei Piontkovsky, Russian elite tires of 
    Eurasian fantasy. Jiang Zemin’s visit was the beginning of the end of 
    the ‘strategic partnership’  
8.  Christian Science Monitor: Scott Peterson, Russian Air Force stalls 
    tailspin. Russia wheels out its best jets for foreign buyers, hoping to 
    bolster its ailing aviation industry.
9.  Irish Times editorial: Poised For Growth.
10. Japan Times: Gwynne Dyer, Say it again, the Soviet system was a waste.
11. St. Petersburg Times: Dmitry Furman, What Lost Opportunities? 
12. AFP: Putin praises "strategic partnership" with Ukraine.   

********

#1
Bush vows to drop ABM 'on our timetable'

CRAWFORD, Texas, Aug 23 (AFP) - 
President George W. Bush vowed Thursday that the United States would drop a
key arms pact "on our timetable" in order to forge ahead with a missile
shield Russia says it staunchly opposes.

"We will withdraw from the ABM treaty on our timetable," he said of the
1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile accord, which prohibits the kind of missile
defense he says Washington must deploy to blunt attacks by so-called "rogue
states."

But Bush also said he had "no specific timetable in mind," a day after US
officials scrambled to deny reports that Washington had given Moscow until
a November summit here to agree to changing the pact.

And he emphasized that he had "made clear" his position -- that the treaty
is a Cold War relic that hampers the United States' ability to defend
itself from so-called "rogue states" -- to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I have made it clear that treaty hampers our ability to keep the peace, to
develop defensive weapons necessary to defend America against the true
threat of the 21st century," said Bush.

Russia is bitterly opposed to the US plan to scrap or sideline the ABM in
order to establish a missile shield. China also opposes the plan, and
several key US allies worry it could spark a new arms race.

But time appeared to be running short for Putin to agree to scrap or modify
the accord, with US officials saying it is a matter of "months, not years"
before efforts to develop a missile shield will infringe on the treaty.

Speaking after arms talks in Moscow, US Under Secretary of State for Arms
Control John Bolton said Wednesday that the two leaders "would be
disappointed in us if we didn't have something for them to consider" at the
November summit.

And the accord, the cornerstone of arms control efforts by the United
States and then-Soviet Union, calls for six-months' notice prior to
withdrawal.

Bolton, who was to meet Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov,
also downplayed the impact of a unilateral US withdrawal, telling a Moscow
radio station: "that will not be the end of all arms control agreements."

The US envoy, who this week held three days of talks on strategic defense
with Russian officials, was to meet with Ivanov around 0700 GMT Friday, a
Russian foreign ministry official said.

The visit is the third by a senior US administration official seeking to
persuade Russia to accept Washington's plans to set up a missile defence
shield since Putin and Bush met at a July Group of Eight summit in Genoa,
Italy.

At the time, Bush agreed to tie mutual cuts in the former Cold War
antagonists' nuclear stockpiles to negotiations on the ABM treaty in an
effort to mollify Putin.

Washington says the shield is necessary to protect it from purported
threats coming from so-called "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iraq.

Russia has reaffirmed its adherence to the treaty, saying that present
consultations on possible cuts in nuclear arsenals are conditional on the
ABM treaty being maintained in its present form.

Senior Russian military officials have stated that specific talks with
Washington on the missile defense issue are unlikely before next year.

*******

#2
Analysis: Wide river between U.S., Russia
By JOSEPH BORIS

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- Russia's and America's respective views of
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty are about as fundamental a difference of
opinion on a global strategic issue as exists today.

For two nations "no longer enemies," as President Bush and others in his
administration have repeatedly pointed out since taking office, Russia and
the United States have far different notions of whether the treaty, which
has done much to preserve the world's nuclear balance of power for three
decades, has a purpose in an age when fear of mutual annihilation felt by
ideological opposites is no longer the linchpin of international security.

Russian officials have been telling the Bush people, and Bill Clinton
before them, that the end of  the Cold War is not  sufficient reason to tear
up what Moscow regards as a still-crucial agreement-at least not without a
frank discussion on how Washington would avoid making the world even more
dangerous by building a missile defense system. The hoped-for system, still
early in the R&D stage, is the administration's justification for seeking
Russian assent to amending the treaty or, failing that, as Bush has made
clear, abandoning it unilaterally.

But the Russians, while holding firm to their contention that the 1972
treaty must be preserved, also have warmed to the idea of sharing in the
"shield" Bush says he wants constructed to protect U.S. allies. Russia has
been described by administration officials, mostly in the context of missile
defense and the United States' goal of unbinding itself from the ABM treaty,
as "not an enemy."

Russian suggestions in taking up the United States' so far somewhat vague
offer to cooperate in a "new framework" for security have begun to take on
some solidity. Bush's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in
Genoa, Italy, in late July has been followed in the past few weeks by
further Cabinet-level meetings, or --as the U.S. administration calls them--
"consultations".

But a powerful example of the ongoing spin and confusion surrounding these
contacts came this week in Moscow, when  Undersecretary of State John
Bolton, a top U.S. arms control negotiator, suggested in an interview
Wednesday with a Moscow radio station that Russia ought to strike a deal on
assenting to a U.S.-based missile defense system by November, when Bush and
Putin are to meet at Bush's Texas ranch. The State Department's press office
quickly put the word out that there was not "deadline" per se for reaching
an understanding on the treaty, but stressed that Foggy Bottom would prefer
for the Russians to agree to scrap the 1972 agreement.

 "I imagine the presidents will be disappointed if by this time we haven't
achieved meaningful progress" on missile defense by then "and they have
anything to talk about at the meeting in Texas," Bolton said, according to a
transcript of his interview posted on the radio station's Web site and
translated from Russian. "But we are not looking at this as an official,
extreme deadline. We will try to achieve as much as possible."

Bolton, repeating a frequent administration line, said the United States
was prepared to pull out of the treaty if it could not reach agreement with
Russia.

"If - although we would rather this not happen - we are not able to come
to an agreement with Russia, then we will be have the right as stated in the
treaty, not to violate it, but to withdraw from it," Bolton was quoted as
saying by the station, Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow).

The treaty allows either side to withdraw with six months' notice.

Firm or not, the suggestion of a deadline clashes with Moscow's consistent
assertion  that the ABM should not be touched. In a statement, Russia's
Foreign Ministry said its delegation at the Bolton meeting had "reconfirmed
its principled stand in support of the ABM Treaty" and would consider cuts
in offensive weapons on condition of "the preservation of the ABM Treaty in
its present form."

Last week, after a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
Putin confirmed his government's interest in an out-and-out linkage between
reductions in the offensive weapons of both sides and any consideration of
changes to the 29-year-old ABM treaty.

But Putin called for specifics on the Bush Administration's "new
framework". And later Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and other Russian
officials made it clear that they have not been convinced by Washington's
argument that the constrains the United States from developing even a
limited missile defense to counter what it says are potential threats from
volatile countries at varying stages of missile development (China, North
Korea, Iran and Iraq).

"I'm afraid not," Ivanov, with Rumsfeld at his side, said in Moscow when
asked if he had come to accept the Bush administration's view. "We still
consider the ABM Treaty to be one of the key elements of the body of
international treaties on which strategic stability is based. And one cannot
discuss the ABM Treaty separately from many other agreements, including
those on offensive weapons that exist today."

Successive senior administration officials say their consultations-not
negotiations, they insist-with Russia as address a multitude of complex and
often intertwined issues aimed at redefining the former rivals'
relationship. Russian officials, at the side of their U.S. colleagues after
these meetings, join in both the upbeat assessments and the acknowledgement
that brass-tacks negotiating did not take place.

Once the joint appearances are over the participants dig in their heels
and reveal why the gulf between their countries on the ABM treaty is
genuinely wide - with U.S. officials threatening an eventual exit from the
treaty, as each party is legally entitled to do, with notice, and the
Russians vowing they will never agree to scrap the agreement.

Russia says the treaty's demise, and the missile defense its absence would
permit, would logically require Moscow to pull back from important
agreements with Washington on offensive weapons. Further, it fears that the
United States, free of the limits of the ABM treaty, would have unchecked
power to intervene militarily in Russia's affairs if it wanted. Of course, a
war between the world's two best-equipped nuclear powers is highly unlikely
with or without the ABM Treaty, but Russia's point is that its traditional
sphere of influence, mainly the other former Soviet republics outside the
Baltic states, would be compromised.

"Until recently, no member of the nuclear club (to which Russia belongs)
has had to fear an external invasion aimed at stopping violations of basic
human rights," which has been accepted by many Western countries as
justification for military action, wrote Russian journalist and scholar
Alexander Altounian recently in the Washington Post. "Successful future
deployment of a national missile defense could change this reality."

Despite such fundamental objections, the Russians, as evidenced by Putin's
recent affirmation, have embraced the U.S. offer to link missile defense
with prospective reductions in each country's arsenal of nuclear warheads.
Toward that end, Russian officials have been eager to begin crunching
numbers, while the U.S. side's typical spin from one meeting has been to
announce the next round of talks, indicating that nothing concrete has been
discussed.

Jon Wolfstahl, who studies arms-control issues at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, a left-center think tank in Washington, sees one of
two scenarios being played out at the current round of U.S.-Russian talks on
the ABM Treaty.

"The first is that the consultations are a smokescreen, and that could
mean (the Russians) will decide, 'There's no details, we can't move
forward,'" he said in an interview. "Cynics could say this is just a
'box-checking exercise' for the administration to satisfy our European
allies (many of whom object to Bush's missile defense plans): 'Right, we've
gone to the Russians, they've said no, so now we have to move forward.'

"On the other hand, and this is what I think is far more likely, is that
the Russians are far more concerned that their refusal to negotiate on ABM
will result in the U.S. simply broaching the treaty unilaterally," he said,
which would leave Moscow empty-handed if it held out.

That outlook is shared by Baker Spring, a national-security scholar at the
Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, though he
believes the game is Russia's to direct even though the United States is the
one proposing the changes. "The U.S. has told Russia that its plans are
still under review, and I really believe they'll get more from the U.S. if
they don't force a unilateral exit. The ball is in the Russians' court as
much as they want to play."

But while the prospects for reaching a deal-at a time when the idea of
bargaining is not in the news-briefing lexicon of U.S. officials - are
uncertain, there will be no shortage of chances to try. After Bolton leaves
this week, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor
Ivanov are due for a meeting next month in New York, while Rumsfeld and
Defense Minister Ivanov plan to meet again, in Naples.

These contacts will be capped by a get-together at the very top, when the
third meeting between mutual admirers Bush and Putin takes place at an Asian
economic conference in Shanghai in October. And in November when the two
meet at Bush's ranch. No doubt they'll hope to have more to chew on than
Texas barbecue.

******

#3
Moscow Times
August 23, 2001
Keep Deterrence
By Pavel Felgenhauer  
 
It has been a hot summer this year in Moscow, but many diplomats in the
U.S. Embassy have been working without much rest because of the constant
file of security VIPs arriving from Washington.

In less than a month: White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and, this week, U.S. Undersecretary
of State John Bolton. Each time, the local staff has had to prepare
meetings and do the groundwork in the simmering heat while decent people
were at their dachas. And all the good work has been in vain: The
U.S.-Russian talks on a new strategic framework are getting nowhere. 

I was among a small group of weary Russian journalists who met with
Rumsfeld at 7 a.m. one morning in his hotel. Rumsfeld was cheery as a lark
and full of enthusiasm. Some of Rumsfeld's entourage told me he travels the
world on a former Air Force One plane that was downgraded from use by the
U.S. president and replaced by a newer version, but is still a very
comfortable carrier with sleeping quarters and other niceties. 

In Moscow, Rumsfeld confiscated the U.S. ambassador's armored limo to go
meet President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and
deliver the cheerful message that the Cold War is over and between friends
there is no need to have arms control treaties. 

Rumsfeld told reporters that there are no arms control treaties between the
United States and Mexico or Canada or Britain. Why should there be any
between Moscow and Washington? 

"The 1972 ABM Treaty is one of the least important issues in U.S.-Russian
relations," he said, "and does not have any sense today. 

"U.S. missile defense plans are defensive in nature and should not worry
anyone, only those that want to lob a missile at the U.S," continued
Rumsfeld. "We want Russia to be rich, healthy and free, if that happens, we
will have no security or military problems." 

Rumsfeld also told reporters that he did not come to Moscow to "bargain"
and that Washington is not offering Moscow anything for a tacit agreement
to allow the United States to build a limited missile defense shield.
American strategic offensive nuclear weapons will be cut back anyway — no
matter what Russia says or does — and there will be no treaties whatsoever
to control how many nukes the Unite States will have. 

Rumsfeld was not specific on how many nukes the United States may cut. MX
Peacekeeper ICBMs and "some" Trident nuclear submarines will be scrapped,
but these were already planned to go some years ago. 

At the same time Rumsfeld insisted there is still much substance to the
talks with Russian officials. He said that from a recent meeting of
military experts in Washington the Russian delegation lead by General Yury
Baluyevsky went home with "tons of documents." 

Apparently most of these documents are U.S. classified reports on how
so-called rogue states are preparing missile attacks on the West. Russia
has asked the U.S. to explain why the ABM Treaty needs to be scrapped, so
the Pentagon is piling up proof of the imminent danger. 

In the spring of 1999 a commission chaired by Rumsfeld reported to the U.S.
Congress that "North Korea will have missiles to attack the U.S. in five
years, Iran will also have missiles to attack the U.S. in five years" and
Iraq, impoverished by sanctions, will have missiles to attack the U.S. "in
10 years or maybe earlier." 

More than half of those five years have passed, there are no visible "rogue
missiles" zeroed in on the United States in sight, but Rumsfeld told me
"the report is still accurate." He said the rogue states are clever: "They
are using other states to test missiles, we have evidence that chemical and
biological warheads have been tested." 

Rumsfeld also told me: "One of the rogue states has launched a
shorter-range missile from a ship at sea disguised to look like a
freighter. They peeled off a cover, erected a launcher, fired the missile
and put the cover back again." 

What nation did it is totally classified, he added. Apparently, this story,
which seems to have been taken directly from the narrative of a James Bond
film (say, "Doctor No"), is a sample of the evidence Washington is feeding
Moscow on why it is desperate to scrap ABM. The story may in fact be true,
but Russian officials are not buying it. 

The Russian military and most of the elite see the West as the worst
potential military threat to this nation. Nuclear deterrence is seen as the
best way to constrain the threat, while the balance is stabilized by arms
control treaties. 

Hardly any Russian leader (even Putin) can today risk even tacitly
supporting U.S. attempts to scrap arms control.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.

*******

#4
Vremya Novostei
August 23, 2001
THE DRAGGED-OUT ROMANCE
The Russian-American plutonium program has been postponed 
Author: Yekaterina Kats
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
RUSSIA IS NOT PARTICULARLY WORRIED BY THE DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED 
IN IMPLEMENTING THE RUSSIAN-AMERICAN AGREEMENT ON THE PROGRAM OF 
PLUTONIUM DISPOSAL. IT SUITS RUSSIA PERFECTLY WELL THAT THIS 
PLUTONIUM, AN INVALUABLE SOURCE OF ENERGY, WILL BE LEFT ALONE.

     Russia is not particularly worried by the difficulties 
encountered in implementing the Russian-American agreement on the 
program of plutonium disposal (the plutonium in question has been 
extracted from warheads). The Kremlin wouldn't mind seeing 
implementation of the program signed last September postponed. And its 
postponement is now on the agenda.
     Environmentalists have obtained a copy of a report by the 
Department of Atomic Energy of the US Energy Department. Written in 
February, the classified report was meant for the US Congress, but 
never reached its destination. Green groups interpreted it as an 
attempt to conceal vital information and raised an outcry.
     In the meantime, some figures from the report (for example, that 
the program will cost US taxpayers $6.6 billion instead of the 
initially promised $2 billion) were leaked to the media in early 
summer.
     It is also common knowledge that there are problems with funding 
for the Russian part of the deal. The West is supposed to provide $1.7 
billion to Moscow over a decade. Russia's financial involvement in the 
project is being reduced. At first it was estimated at $2.1 billion, 
but a way of saving $300-400 million was found. Russia will process 
most of the plutonium, turning it into fuel for nuclear reactors, 
which will then be sold to the West. Thus, the overall cost of the 
project will be reduced. But $1 billion is needed to set the project 
into motion.
     The G-8 is supposed to meet the bill, and Russia retains the 
right to withdraw from the program or suspend its implementation if an 
installment of funding fails to materialize. Neither the agreement as 
such nor the addenda specify which countries are prepared to invest 
how much into the disposal of 34 metric tons of Russian plutonium.
     No state has volunteered to part with its money so far. The 
United States remains the only sponsor. According to Senior Deputy 
Nuclear Energy Minister Valentin Ivanov, Washington guarantees Russia 
$600 million. Congress has already approved allocation of $200 
million. The G-8 failed to reach an agreement, and did its best to 
involve Belgium and Italy in the financial aspect of the program. The 
attempt failed, and the program disappeared from the G-8 Genoa summit 
agenda altogether.
     Actually, the program will be postponed even if the G-8 scrapes 
up the money. Under the agreement, Moscow and Washington should 
process plutonium simultaneously. Washington's failure to fulfill its 
part of the bargain will inevitably result in the Kremlin deciding to 
postpone implementation of its own program, and vice versa.
     Sources in the upper echelons of the Nuclear Energy Ministry say 
that the new US Administration has requested time to consider its 
options. The grace period expires next April.
     The Russian Nuclear Energy Ministry is not in the least 
concerned. Even when the agreement was being signed, Nuclear Energy 
Ministry officials all but openly admitted that the agreement was a 
concession to the international community, made for purely political 
considerations. Moreover, it suits Russia perfectly well that this 
plutonium, an invaluable source of energy, will be left alone.

*******

#5
American public attitudes on Russia
www.americans-world.org
August 23, 2001

American public attitudes on Russia is the topic of the sixth release of
the Americans and the World website (www.americans-world.org).  On the
website you will find a comprehensive analysis that integrates all publicly
available polling data on this topic.

Americans and the world is developed and maintained by the Program on
International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), a joint program of the Center on
Policy Attitudes and the Center for International and Security Studies at
Maryland at the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland.   

Briefly stated, our analysis finds that: 

Following a distinct cooling in 1999 and 2000, attitudes toward Russia have
recently warmed so that more Americans now have a favorable opinion of
Russia than have an unfavorable attitude. Few Americans see Russia as
either an adversary or a partner; most see it in more intermediate terms.
Likewise, the threat from Russia is seen in intermediate terms, and as
being less than from China, and in terms of immediate threats, less than
from terrorist groups or Iran and Iraq. Russia is not seen as inherently
threatening. Today and throughout the last decade, large to overwhelming
majorities have consistently viewed Russia as a vital interest for the US.

Very strong majorities favor nuclear arms reduction agreements with Russia.
While a majority favors pursuing a national missile defense program (NMD),
a modest majority opposes proceeding with it if this would require the US
to violate existing arms control treaties with Russia or if it would
interfere with further US-Russian nuclear arms reduction agreements.

While a strong majority of Americans supported enlarging NATO, they
primarily favored doing so to remove divisions in Europe and to promote
collective security, rather than as a response to a Russian threat.
Overall, there is strong support for taking an inclusive approach to
Russia--as evidenced by strong support for the Russia-NATO Council--and for
even ultimately including Russia in NATO. In the short term most want to
show some sensitivity to Russian concerns by not moving too quickly with
the expansion of NATO, and by holding back from putting military forces
close to Russian territory.

A majority supports giving economic aid to Russia, though there is not
majority support for increasing it. 

Over the coming weeks and months PIPA will be releasing additional reports
on such subjects as global warming, international trade, international
women's issues, America's role in the world, human rights, the Middle East,
and many other topics.  Gradually we will build a comprehensive resource on
US public opinion on international issues. 

Our hope and expectation is that this will provide a valuable resource for
policymakers, journalists, researchers, non-governmental organizations,
students, and all individuals who would like to know more about American
public opinion. 

Americans and the World is made possible by grants from the Rockefeller
Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and the Compton Foundation. 

*******

#6
MSNBC
August 21, 2001
Dangerous liaison 
A new pact between Russia and China begs more scrutiny 
By Michael Moran
 
    NEW YORK, Aug. 21 —  Those old enough to remember ringing in the New
Year of 1984 also will recall a spate of stories noting that —somehow —
humanity had managed to avoid the fate imagined for us by George Orwell’s
book of the same title. Sure, nuclear warheads were pointed at every U.S.
and Russian community of more than 100,000 souls. But at least no wars
raged between great, bloodthirsty geographic blocs like “East Asia” or
“Oceania.” We all breathed a sigh of relief, then a deeper one five years
later when the Berlin Wall fell. But what if Orwell merely got the date
wrong?    
    OVER THE past summer, the backlash against a post-Cold War agenda which
has been largely dictated by the United States has taken a new and ominous
shape. Call it the armed wing of the anti-globalization movement: the
Shanghai Pact, signed in June by Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. This new group proclaims a desire to cooperate
on regional issues like drug smuggling, Islamic militancy and trade. But
many in the West who study developments in Central Asia and the former
Soviet Union see something quite different — a kind of “Monroe Doctrine”
for the Eurasian landmass aimed at keeping American influence out of the
last significant area on earth it has yet to penetrate. 
     At first glance, many in Europe or the United States will shrug their
shoulders and say, “So what?” The region doesn’t have a whole lot to
recommend it at the moment, home as it is to the world’s two most prickly
Islamic regimes (Iran and Afghanistan); its most volatile nuclear standoff
(between India and Pakistan in Kashmir); its most violent separatist
movement (in Chechnya) and a collection of poor and backward former Soviet
republics in Central Asia. 
       
PAPER TIGER?  
     Still, the conclusion of this agreement, which received little
coverage in the United States, has sparked a debate inside the Bush
administration and in the Washington defense and intelligence
establishments. On one side are those who hear in this new liaison
overtones of another anti-Western pact signed in Warsaw in 1955. Among them
is Constantine Menges, a former national security aide to Ronald Reagan,
author of an essay published in The Washington Post last month that has
made the rounds in e-mail. Menges says the Shanghai Pact is something for
Washington to be worried about. The pact, he writes, “explicitly seeks to
promote ‘a new international order.’ Less than a month after the signing,
Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Jiang Zemin met again, this
time to ink a treaty of bilateral cooperation which pledges both to come to
the aid of the other in case they are ever attacked.
       
FRIEND OR FIEND?
    American foreign policy analysts — as well as the State Department
under both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — have generally dismissed talk
of a new Beijing-Moscow axis as fantasy. In 1996, a week before Boris
Yeltsin and Jiang signed the first “friendship treaty” between the two
nations since Stalin’s time, State Department spokesman Glyn Davis said,
“We don’t have any concerns.  
     In fact, we’ve said before that to the extent that those two nations
get along better and have such contacts, I think, the region and the world
is better off.”
     Fast-forward five years, to the signing of the Shanghai Pact, and the
response is much the same: Bush administration spokesman Richard Boucher
dismissed it as “a treaty of friendship, not an alliance.” 
     Technically speaking, Boucher is correct. Even with some $50 billion
in arms sales from Russia to China expected by 2005, the two nations are
probably still more likely to go to war with one another than with any
Western power. Their effort to build a regional group can be viewed as a
positive development — and effort to create a forum to discuss disputes
like the burgeoning population of Chinese in Russia’s far eastern provinces
or their designs on Central Asian or Caspian gas and oil reserves. They do
have legitimate regional concerns, including heroin trafficking, the Afghan
Taliban and a raging Islamic civil war inside Tajikistan that spills across
its neighbors’ borders from time to time.   
      Russia recently won the right to overfly Uzbek airspace and has
maintained a strong garrison in Tajikistan since the mid-1990s. To call
this a flash-point is understatement.
       
THE KOSOVO LEGACY
     But in a more global sense, it would be foolish to write these two
agreements as mere diplomatic niceties — like some sister-city agreement
between Osh Kosh and Omsk. Regardless of the motives one ascribes to
American foreign policy since 1989, for much of the rest of the planet, it
looks pushy at best, and imperialist or downright threatening to many. 
     The Kosovo war — even without the accidental missile strike that
destroyed China’s embassy in Belgrade — did more than strike fear into the
hearts of potential American rivals. It also set them to thinking: ‘I
certainly can’t beat ‘em, so who can I join?’
     Theorists and writers of the past decade rightly have identified the
United States as the only player capable of making or breaking an issue on
the international stage by virtue of its enormous economic power and its
military superiority. But this caution can’t be stated frequently enough:
in historical terms, this is a temporary phenomenon.   
     As the world’s economy slows, the “age of globalization” as defined by
Tom Friedman will be put to the test. The United States did precious little
during the boom years to insulate itself against the wrath of those for
whom globalization is not a cure-all. Resentment runs high in many nations
about the damage that Hollywood movies, Internet porn, McDonalds hamburgers
and Marlboro cigarettes are doing to native health, culture and industry.
Fairly or not, this is seen abroad as an American invasion — a view that
presents a golden opportunity for those who wish America ill. Even if the
Shanghai Pact remains a peaceful one, it is just the kind of rallying point
the discredited totalitarian ideologies of the past have been yearning for
since the collapse of communism in Europe. If the Cold War taught us
anything, it’s that battles aren’t always won with bullets. Americans yawn
at their own peril.  

*******

#7
The Russia Journal
August 17-23, 2001
Russian elite tires of Eurasian fantasy
Jiang Zemin’s visit was the beginning of the end of the ‘strategic
partnership’ 
By ANDREI PIONTKOVSKY 

During Vladimir Putin’s first year as president, our foreign policy took on
a demonstratively anti-American character. 

The excited state of Russia’s "political elite," with their thirst for
greatness of their own, or, failing that, taking part in some other kind of
preferably anti-American greatness, made it highly likely that Russia would
embark on a course of military alliance and "strategic partnership" with
China. (Though any serious observer knows that such a course would not only
marginalize Russia but also subjugate it to China’s strategic interests and
eventually lead to loss of control over the Far East and Siberia.) 

I remember how one of our prominent political analysts heatedly threatened
his American colleague, "You’ll someday see our ships flying the Chinese
flag in the Taiwan Strait."

For Russia’s Eurasians, the natural development and culmination of this
policy was getting Jiang Zemin to visit Moscow and sign a historic
agreement on strategic partnership. The visit took place, the agreement was
signed, accompanied by pompous and weighty words, and we even agreed for
the first time to sell Su-30 fighter planes to China. But something gave
way in our "elite’s" united Eurasian movement. Clearly, the long-awaited
visit marked not so much the peak of the Eurasian pendulum’s swing as the
beginning of its movement in the other direction.

It looks as though over the last year or two of virtual confrontation with
the West a few things have become obvious to even the most fanatic
Eurasians and most seriously afflicted anti-Westerners. 

For a start, China is a cat that goes its own way and has done so for
thousands of years. It is a self-sufficient state that, unlike the Russian
political elite, does not suffer from any complexes and does not need any
strategic partnership with Russia, especially not on an anti-American basis. 

But if these pale-faced northern barbarians, who once imposed unjust
agreements on the Middle Kingdom, put so much importance on bits of paper
about strategic partnership and a multi-polar world, then it’s worth
signing them for the sake of securing uninterrupted supplies of
state-of-the-art arms. 

For the Chinese superpower of the 21st century, however, relations with the
United States, its main economic partner and political rival, are far more
important than relations with Russia. And in building these relations, the
Chinese leadership will take into account all kinds of considerations, but
the complexes of Russian politicians will not be among them.

For Russia, meanwhile, relations with the United States, the G7 and the
West in general could be even more important again than relations with
China. In any event, Russian Eurasianism has always been historically of
secondary importance, reflecting wounded feelings against the West and
fulfilling the role of sanitary pad for the Russian "elite" on the critical
days of its relations with the West. 

What importance do China, India, Serbian brothers, Cuban ragamuffins and a
little North Korean freak have in this context? They are no more than
pretexts of the moment that the manic-depressive Russian elite needs to
express its feelings toward the eternally loved and loathed West. The
existential Russian question,"Do you respect me?" is addressed not to a
chance drinking companion but to the heavens of the West, from which
someone has to descend to look into the soul of our political elite and
marvel at the unique treasures it contains.

The Chinese are well aware of this, and that is why they react to Russia’s
periodic overtures with skepticism and an inevitable dose of condescending
contempt. Of course, it’s possible to put on a temporary show of false
loyalty for tactical reasons, but it gets tiring after a while. A certain
weariness with insincere embraces was tangible during the Chinese visit and
in the commentaries that followed. 

As always in Russia, much depends on the position and mood of whoever is at
the top. The supreme authority, bestowed on us in its present incarnation
by the Lord God and Boris Berezovsky, is the flesh and blood of his class
and, as noted above, gave tribute to all his complexes, fantasies and
prejudices. 

But being more cynical than fanatical, the supreme authority can’t let
himself drift too far from the hard realities of this world. When
questioned about potential joint opposition from Russia and China to U.S.
missile defense plans, Putin answered that the two countries would set
their own independent policy. This sounded like the epitaph to the
Russian-Chinese military-strategic union.

*******

#8
Christian Science Monitor
24 August 2001
Russian Air Force stalls tailspin
Russia wheels out its best jets for foreign buyers, hoping to bolster its 
ailing aviation industry.
By Scott Peterson
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor 

ZHUKOVSKY, RUSSIA - If the ability to perform airborne ballet were the only 
criterion, then its dramatic leaps and twirls might make Russia's 
experimental Su-37 "Berkut" jet fighter the industry standard. "This plane is 
designed to solve the contradictory problems of the air," the announcer at 
the Moscow Air Show last week told a gasping crowd of thousands.

Russia's beleaguered aviation industry also hopes to mimic such acrobatic 
feats on the ground, as it tries to pull its Air Force out of a tailspin even 
while selling off its best planes.
 
Reversing the downward spiral will not be easy, despite the spit and polish 
on display at the Moscow Air Show. Most planes there were well-known, freshly 
dusted Soviet models.

When he opened the show last week, President Vladimir Putin promised 
top-level attention to a military industry forced to rely solely on exports 
in the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov is optimistic. Noting a combination of fresh 
sales abroad, diversification to civilian planes, and a new joint program 
with European firms to upgrade East European MIG jets to NATO standards, he 
says "military aviation is at last standing up off its knees."

Recent contracts with China and India have pushed Russian arms exports to a 
post-Soviet high of $3.2 billion this year. China agreed last month to buy 38 
Su-30 ground attack aircraft for $2 billion, and, in June, India made a 
decade-long, $10 billion deal with a large air component.

But, with no other large foreign prospects on the horizon, the industry is 
looking anew at domestic sales. A revival could one day enable Russia to 
modernize its own air force, and create a new fighter to compete with the 
West.

High oil prices - Russia is one of Europe's main suppliers - now mean the 
ministry of defense has more money to spend. The new 2002 budget approved by 
the cabinet on Tuesday allots an extra $1.5 billion in defense spending.

Russia's 2001 defense budget is currently $7.3 billion, and Air Force chiefs 
want to earmark enough to modernize 80 percent of the fleet by 2005. 
Meanwhile, Russia's heaviest hitters, Sukhoi and MiG, are presenting 
competing designs for a fifth-generation fighter to begin production in 2010.

"The aircraft are aging before our very eyes," Russia's Air Force commander 
Anatoly Kornukov said last Friday. "For the past 10 years, not a single new 
aircraft has been added to our front-line air force." Only 5 percent of 
Russia's planes are the "most modern," he noted. There is no fuel at 49 of 
the nation's 115 military airports.

"They are taking graduates from air defense colleges and putting them in the 
infantry because they have no planes and no fuel," says Dale Herrspring, a 
former diplomat and Russian military expert at Kansas State University. Mr. 
Herrspring visited several military installations earlier this year. "These 
guys are in deep, deep hurt."

Cut adrift from the Soviet cash cow in 1991, military design teams have also 
been searching for ways to streamline the military as part of a sweeping, 
five-year overhaul announced last month. The plan halves Russia's 1,700 
military enterprises and consolidates its aviation companies into two main 
groups.

"Putin has made up his mind that the old military-industrial complex was 
inefficient and corrupt, and this is a way to beat it into submission while 
making it more efficient," Herrspring says.

"The government should take steps to support this industry, or we won't be 
able to produce any new generation aircraft," says Maxim Pyadushkin, deputy 
director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow. 
"We are losing our scientific potential, our researchers and designers."

But some counter that the brain drain is exaggerated. "There have been rumors 
in the media and our factory that MIG is dead, that all the engineers have 
left, and that we can't build planes," says Lev Bolshakov, a senior MIG 
salesman, after showing off the cockpit of a MIG-29 to a prospective buyer 
from Southern Africa.

On the open market, MIG fighters are competitive, because of their low price. 
"If this were the only criteria, we would have won the world," Mr. Bolshakov 
says. "But there are also politics."

Political decisions are being made by several East European nations - who 
want to join NATO - about Soviet MIG fleets they inherited a decade ago. They 
have two choices: either upgrade MIG-29s to NATO standard (the cheaper 
option), or buy new or used American or Swedish planes at a steep price.

Most nations seem to be choosing the more expensive Western planes, despite a 
joint-upgrade business formed by MIG and the West European Airbus-maker, 
EADS. Germany, which has dealt with Russian MIG upgrades since taking over 
former East German aircraft, is leading the way. "We tell [the Russians] that 
the only possibility to move forward is partnership with Western companies," 
says Wolfgang Aldag, a Germany-based EADS sales director.

While experts say there are 1,500 MIGs worldwide - 400 or so of which can be 
upgraded this way - aspiring NATO candidates, such as Hungary, Bulgaria, and 
Poland, seem to be reluctant. Hungary's prime minister said its MIG-29s make 
it the "lame duck" of NATO.

"Of course it's cheaper to upgrade the existing fleet, but with Western 
aircraft, they will have some kind of Western support," says Mr. Pyadushkin. 
"It's not a commercial choice, but rather a political one."

Sukhoi, which last year accounted for half of Russia's overall arms sales, is 
pursuing a different tack. At the air show, it wheeled out agricultural 
planes, and talked up a planned $70 million supersonic business jet. It also 
signed a large deal last week with American airplane giant Boeing and 
Moscow-based Ilyushin to build civilian planes for Russia's domestic market.

"We are ready to build civilian planes," says Yuri Cherbakov, chief spokesman 
for Sukhoi. "There are no prospects ...in the military sector."

*******

#9
Irish Times
August 22, 2001
Editorial
Poised For Growth 

Ten years ago this week the world held its breath as a political convulsion 
ran its course in Moscow. The collapse of a hardline coup d'etat on August 
21st, 1991, due as much to bad organisation as to opposition from the public, 
ushered in an intense period of change and instability. Initially hopes were 
high of positive reforms, despite the demise of Mikhail Gorbachev, whose 
programme of change had won support from the West. Power moved rapidly to 
Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian component of the Soviet Union. The 
expectations were that movement towards democratic and economic reform would 
be swifter and more positive under his leadership.

Mr Yeltsin proved to be extremely adept at destroying the old Soviet 
structures and this, it is generally accepted, was the main achievement of 
his presidency. His ability to put effective new arrangements in their place 
proved to be severely limited. In power virtually from the end of the coup 
until the conclusion of the century, Mr Yeltsin presided over two terrible 
internal wars in the breakaway province of Chechnya, in which more Russian 
citizens lost their lives than at any time since Stalin was in power. His 
presidency also saw the establishment of a corrupt system of "wild 
capitalism" in which cronyism dominated the procedure for privatisation of 
state assets and, in many cases, the Makarov pistol became an everyday 
business tool.

In August, 1998, the economy lurched into a deep crisis. Russia defaulted on 
its international debt. Major banks collapsed and the emerging middle class 
saw its savings annihilated. The value of the rouble plummeted and for a 
short time the shelves on Russian food stores began to resemble those of old 
Soviet times. Mr Yeltsin, increasingly given to extremely unpredictable 
behaviour, surprised the world on the morning of December 31st, 1999, with 
the announcement that he was resigning his post. He appointed the 
little-known former KGB spy, Mr Vladimir Putin, as his successor and was 
immediately given an amnesty from prosecution at a time when allegations of 
corruption beset him and his family.

The 1998 devaluation of the rouble gave the economy a boost. Mr Putin's 
taking over the reins of power coincided with a massive rise in oil prices 
and with oil exports making up 80 per cent of the country's hard currency 
revenues, Russia may now be on the brink of a period of strong economic 
growth. Economic growth for the first half of this year, for example, was 
more than 5 per cent. The indications are that Russia's weak economic and 
military position will not last forever. This is something the western 
powers, particularly the United States, would do well to take into account 
when tempted to act unilaterally. 

******

#10
Japan Times
August 22, 2001
Say it again, the Soviet system was a waste 
By GWYNNE DYER 
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are 
published in 45 countries.

LONDON -- It's 10 years this month since the failed Communist coup against 
President Mikhail Gorbachev marked the effective end of the old Soviet Union. 
The predictable rash of articles lamenting its loss has started showing up on 
editorial pages, written mostly by the usual suspects. How awful it is there 
now. Maybe the standard of living in the "motherland of socialism" was low, 
but at least it was reliable. Russian democracy is a sham, and its capitalism 
only serves the rich. So it's time to say it again: the Soviet Union deserved 
to die.

It deserved to die even though it put the first man into space, guaranteed 
all of its citizens enough to eat (albeit often only sausages and cabbage) 
and kept the worst kinds of thuggery under control (more or less) by 
recruiting the biggest bullies into the party. The miseries that have 
followed the Soviet Union's fall have more to do with the nature of the old 
Communist system than with the nature of market capitalism.

There are as many excuses for communist regimes as there are naive outsiders 
who want to believe in heaven on earth and cynical insiders who want to hang 
on to power. A prize example was Chinese President Jiang Zemin's warning to 
journalists from the New York Times: "Should China apply the parliamentary 
democracy of the Western world, the only result will be that 1.2 billion 
Chinese people will not have enough food to eat. The result will be great 
chaos, and should that happen, it will not be conducive to world peace and 
stability."

Why can't China be a democracy? Maybe China's problem is sheer diversity, 
although India, with a billion people and 14 official languages, has been a 
democracy for over half a century. Average Indian incomes are below China's 
and the gulf between the rich and the poor in India is even wider, but 
current trends are closing both those gaps. And while India can be a pretty 
rough place if you're poor, it has not murdered tens of millions of its own 
people.

So are the Chinese just so disorganized that they cannot cope with democracy? 
Of course not. Jiang is simply protecting his own position and that of his 
fellow Communist bosses by claiming that ordinary Chinese cannot do without 
them. Oligarchs always talk like that.

Come back to the case of the old Soviet Union. Gorbachev's aim back in the 
1980s was to "reform" Communism in the direction of democracy and fix the 
economy without destroying the party's "leading role" in society. In other 
words, he wanted to turn a fish into a bird and teach it to ride a bicycle -- 
underwater. It couldn't be done, because the old Soviet system was 
fundamentally based on force, lies and lawlessness.

What was necessary for democracy, or even for long-term economic growth, was 
the destruction of the entire communist system. The subsequent decade has 
been hard on most citizens of ex-communist countries, but that does not mean 
the change was a bad idea. It just means that after a lifetime of dealing 
with a brutal and corrupt system, people's attitudes and habits were not well 
fitted for dealing with the problems and choices that democracy and a market 
economy brought them.

It won't be easy for China to democratize either. Twenty years of 
market-oriented reforms may have given ordinary Chinese people a better grasp 
of how free economies work than the Russians had 10 years ago, but there are 
huge upheavals and great pain ahead as the hundreds of millions who still 
live in the old command economy are forced into the market one. Moreover, 
most Chinese are as unfamiliar with the ethics and norms of democracy as 
Russians were in 1985, before the Gorbachev reforms began.

So it will be a hard transition for China too, but it will come. When a 
communist party starts seeking capitalist entrepreneurs as members (Jiang's 
main ideological innovation), you can safely say that its beneficiaries won't 
let it lie down. The notion that some cultures are naturally better at 
democracy than others is a temporal fallacy. But Jiang can't admit that, any 
more than he can admit that the whole half century of Communist rule in China 
was a horrible waste of time, money and lives, just like the Soviet 
"experiment." But then, Mikhail Gorbachev can't bring himself to admit that 
even 10 years after the fall of Communism in Russia.

*******

#11
St. Petersburg Times
August 21, 2001
What Lost Opportunities? 
By Dmitry Furman 
Dmitry Furman is a research fellow at the Institute of European Studies of 
the Russian Academy of Sciences. The complete version of this article 
appeared in the Rodina history magazine. 

THE 10th anniversary of Russia without the Soviet Union and without the 
all-powerful Communist Party makes a great pretext for reflection on the past 
decade's missed opportunities.

When we speak about "missed opportunities" we usually mean the good options 
that have been missed. But at any given moment of a country's history - just 
as in the life of an individual - there is a whole range of options, only one 
of which becomes reality. Usually, it is not the best one, or the worst.

The range of Russia's options during the past 10 to 15 years has been 
relatively narrow. In 1985, when perestroika began, Russia was a mature 
organism whose national psychology, memory of its past and old habits had 
already been formed. Nonetheless, it had certain choices.

To compare our history since Mikhail Gorbachev with a gamble: We won the 
whole pot in the beginning. Soviet power was doomed. But the collapse of 
Soviet power could have taken various forms. When Gorbachev emerged at the 
top and for six years proceeded to dismantle the system, it was a huge stroke 
of luck. An extremely improbable option. 

Six years of Gorbachev's reforms prepared the people for the fall of the 
totalitarian regime. I believe that the fact that we still have many 
achievements of democracy is largely due to those years of preparation.

Could Gorbachev have stayed in power? He could have, but only at the expense 
of a radical slowing down or even complete freeze of the democratic process. 
I think that would have been a better option than the one that was realized, 
because slow progress - or even a halt in progress - is better than a rapid 
leap leading to a backlash. 

Revolutionary achievement of freedom by an unprepared country necessarily 
leads to a loss of this freedom. Tyrannies brought to life in such a way are 
usually worse than the old regimes. The semi-constitutional monarchy of 1905 
to 1907 was not a democracy, but it was immeasurably better than the tyranny 
that took hold after a short outburst of freedom in 1917. Six years of 
Gorbachev's rule were the preparation, without which the downfall of Soviet 
power could have become a real catastrophe.

There was one option, however, that definitely never existed. Gorbachev could 
not have led an absolutely unprepared country to real democracy, which 
presumes an opposition capable of gaining power and the rotation of various 
political forces in the government. At best, he could have created a 
"semi-democratic" regime with a renamed Communist Party as the only ruling 
party, with weak right-wing and left-wing oppositions that would have 
gradually carried out market reforms and dismantled the Soviet Union. 

In this case, we could have avoided much bloodshed and disillusionment. The 
privatization process would have been slower, but less of a robbery. The 
impoverishment of the population would have been lessened. By now, we would 
have been somewhat closer to a democratic norm. 

The collapse of communist power in our situation - with a total absence of 
civil society, developed parties and democratic traditions, and with the 
people used to obeying the authorities blindly - would have inevitably led to 
presidential authoritarianism. 

Of course, somebody "more decent" than Boris Yeltsin could have popped up, 
and we could have avoided the bloody coup of 1993. Some form of conflict 
between president and parliament was inevitable. It was conceived in the 
unclear separation of legislative and executive powers inherited by the new 
Russian state from the Soviet constitution. It could still be worse than it 
was. 

But under any scenario, we would have shifted to an authoritarian presidency. 
When the power is seized by a group of people who are restrained by neither 
party discipline nor democratic procedures, the privatization process could 
not have turned into anything but plundering of state property.

Perhaps I lack imagination, but I don't see any major options for a different 
development. And I don't think that the absolutely worst option has become a 
reality.

Of course, some of the relatively favorable options have been missed as well. 
Not so long ago, we could almost have elected - for the first time in 
Russia's history - a person not appointed from above as head of state. When 
Yeltsin wavered in choosing a successor, the elite began to organize itself 
and nominated its own candidate: Yevgeny Primakov. If the circumstances had 
been slightly different - say Primakov was a different kind of man or Yeltsin 
had postponed his choice even further -we would have had two candidates from 
the "party of power" and something very close to democratic elections.

Apart from this unlikely option, any Yeltsin appointee would have become 
president. Our party system and political watersheds are such that any 
opposition candidate, right or left, is a greater evil for the majority of 
the population. Such is the political culture and psychology of the majority, 
formed during the course of our whole history. Our majority always prefers 
the certainty of powers-that-be to the uncertainty of freedom.

What would be different if we had another president today? Not much. Vladimir 
Putin, I think, is not the best option, but not the worst one either. Of 
course, he has introduced some changes in "style" - both good and bad changes 
- into politics. But his main task has been to put the system "in order." To 
make it manageable and fight the forces that were born of the revolution: 
separatism and the oligarchs. All the while, he gradually distances himself 
from the revolutionary past and establishes himself as "normal." 

Obviously, the present regime of a chosen, rather than freely elected 
president, will not last forever. It is one of many transitional, 
"semi-democratic" steps that emerge in countries that are psychologically and 
culturally unprepared for democracy. Ultimately, a crisis is inevitable. It 
will bring new options and form a bridge to genuine democracy with choices. 
But it won't happen soon. 

*******

#12
Putin praises "strategic partnership" with Ukraine

KIEV, Aug 23 (AFP) - 
Russia and Ukraine are linked by a "strategic partnership" which is important 
for Europe and the world, Russian President Vladimir Putin said here Thursday.

"Our strategic partnership is good for the Commonwealth of Independent 
States, a united Europe and the world," Putin said, addressing a reception 
marking the 10th anniversary of Ukraine's break from Soviet rule.

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is the loose association of 12 
sovereign countries that were once Soviet republics.

"The common future of Russia and Ukraine is that of two very closely linked 
European countries," Putin stressed, on the first day of a two-day visit to 
the Ukrainian capital.

Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma urged more frequent Russian-Ukrainian 
summits: "We see each other too rarely," he said: "There are so many problems 
and of such a kind that they cannot be resolved without meetings between the 
two presidents."

Together with Russia, Ukraine was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union 
until the collapse of the latter in 1991.

Bilateral relations warmed when Putin came to power early last year.

Observers say Putin is trying to strengthen links between former Soviet 
republics, especially between the Slavonic states Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

On Friday, Ukraine's national day, Putin was scheduled to attend a military 
march-past and the inauguration of a new monument celebrating national 
independence.

Ukraine is currently being courted both by Moscow and the West, with NATO 
Secretary General George Robertson last month describing the country as "one 
of the keys of European stability."

It last month joined in a series of military exercises involving nine NATO 
members and four NATO partners and hosted a two-day defence symposium 
sponsored by the western alliance.

The two countries have inched towards a broad agreement on the issue of 
Ukraine's gas debts that have poisoned relations between the two countries 
since the break-up of the Soviet Union a decade ago.

Russian firms have become increasingly well established in Ukraine, winning 
several contract in the country's strategic industries.

Anti-Russian feeling is now largely a thing of the past, except in 
nationalist circles which continue to denounce Kuchma for getting cosy with 
the Kremlin.

Under Putin, Russia has become increasingly conscious of Ukraine's strategic 
importance.

"The Russians know that without Ukraine they will never manage to re-create a 
military pole in Europe capable of counterbalancing NATO," a leading alliance 
official said recently.

Kiev has not applied to join NATO, partly in consideration for Moscow's 
feelings, but has not ruled out doing so in the long term.

But analysts believe Russia would be delighted to see Ukraine sign on to join 
the embryonic Russia-Belarus union.

As relations between Moscow and Kiev have warmed in recent months, those 
between Kiev and the West have cooled.

Kuchma's "authoritarian tendencies", with or without official involvement, 
alleged but unproven, in the killing of an opposition journalist, have caused 
serious concern in western capitals.

Overt criticism by the European Union and the United States has been muted, 
given a desire to avoid driving Kiev into the arms of Moscow, and in June US 
President George W. Bush urged the Europeans to ease Ukraine's transition to 
democratic reforms.

The strength of western interest in the Ukraine can be gauged by the fact 
that Robertson was accompanied on his visit to Kiev last month by US National 
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and the EU foreign policy supremo Javier 
Solana.

Flattered to find himself the centre of so much attention, Kuchma sought to 
reassure his northern neighbour.

"The development of relations with the Russian Federation is complementary to 
our rapprochement with the European Union," he said, displaying a keen sense 
of realpolitik.

Ukraine is dependent on Moscow for nearly 70 percent of its energy supplies 
and for 40 percent of its export sales.
 
******