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#6 - RW 262
Ex-defense minister accuses US of seeking to dominate
Russia
June 19, 2003
AP
MOSCOW - A former Russian defense minister on Thursday accused the United
States of trying to dominate Russia and alleged that former and current Kremlin
and military leaders had permitted the country to be forced into submission.
"Russia now is an occupied country," retired Gen. Igor Rodionov
told a sympathetic audience of World War II veterans who gathered for a
conference on threats to Russia's security marking the anniversary of the Nazi
invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.
"Our geopolitical enemy has achieved what Hitler wanted to do,"
Rodionov said in an emotional speech. "Neither our nuclear forces and tank
armadas nor the KGB could save us."
Communist lawmaker Viktor Ilyukhin issued similar dark warnings of alleged
U.S. hostile intentions. "Russia may suffer another tragedy," he said.
"American pressure is now focused on Russia."
Speeches at the veterans' conference repeated the staple rhetoric of
Communists and other hard-liners. However, Russian media have recently spread
similar fears of U.S. intrigues against Moscow to a broader audience.
The popular daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of Russia's largest circulation
newspapers, recently published an article by a mysterious, previously unknown
military expert who theorized that the United States would invade Russia after
many of its aging Soviet-era nuclear missiles are taken off duty after 2010. The
story has been reprinted in other media including many Internet web sites.
The theory has been derided by mainstream Russian politicians and analysts,
but opinion polls suggest that many Russians share a deep distrust of the United
States.
A nationwide poll conducted at the end of May by the All-Russian Center for
Public Opinion Research, Russia's top independent polling service, showed that
44 percent of respondents had a "strongly negative or mostly negative"
view of the United States, while 46 percent had a positive attitude and 10
percent couldn't describe their position. The poll of 1,600 had a margin of
error of no more than 3.4 percentage points.
The poll reflected the disagreements between Russia and the United States
over Iraq that have marred bilateral ties following a honeymoon resulting from
Putin's support for the U.S. war in Afghanistan. U.S. Presidents George W. Bush
and Putin have both signaled the intention to move past the dispute over Iraq.
CDI Russia Weekly #262 ~ Contents • Next
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