Pundits comment on Russia's description in US intelligence strategy
Interfax
Moscow, 16 September: Russian political analysts agree with the description of Russia as the USA's partner and at the same time as a country capable of complicating its interests. This description was given in the new US intelligence strategy. (Passage omitted)
"Russia is a difficult partner for the USA as Americans are difficult partners for us," Sergey Markov, director of the Institute for Political Studies and an MP, told Interfax on Wednesday (16 September).
He said that this description of Russia is an expression of President Barak Obama's policy.
"Russia is not a NATO partner, but a partner, first of all, in what concerns combating terrorism," Markov said.
"Of course, there are situations that we see differently - the regime of (Georgian President) Mikheil Saakashvili, the situation in Ukraine and several other problems including Iran," he said.
Meanwhile, Leonid Gruk, head of Center for Latin American Social and Politic Studies, believes that Americans are certainly counting on Russia as a partner in certain matters.
"Formally they need a partner because the geographic structure of all the US military operations presupposes that some cargo should go through Russia," he told Interfax on Wednesday.
Despite this, Gruk believes that, similarly to the Cold War times, the USA are incapable of understanding Russia's policy.
"They cannot clearly define the direction of our country's domestic policy. It causes certain doubt in them that leads to these contradictory conclusions for developing a strategy," Gruk said.
