Putin wins Russian election!

Wait, you may say, I thought Dmitry Medvedev won Russia's election today. True. But who is this mysterious Medvedev, who current President Vladimir Putin chose as his successor back in December. Simply put, Medvedev is a smaller version of Putin; he is the "nano-president".

As I said, Medvedev is slated to win the rigged election today.

Vladimir Putin's handpicked successor Dmitry Medvedev was cruising to an easy victory in Russia's presidential election Sunday, a result expected to give significant power to the outgoing president.

The Central Election Commission said that returns from 15 percent of Russia's electoral districts showed Medvedev with about 65 percent.

Some voters complained of pressure to cast ballots for Medvedev, and critics called the election a cynical stage show to ensure unbroken rule by Putin and his allies.

Sunday's vote came after a tightly controlled campaign and months of political maneuvering by Putin, who appeared determined to keep a strong hand on Russia's reins while maintaining while maintaining the basic trappings of electoral democracy and leaving the constitution intact.

Medvedev is expected to formally take over as president in May, and Putin has agreed to be his prime minister.

It will interesting to see Putin as PM. He will no doubt continue to weld power as presidential puppet-master. His popularity continues in Russia as he has brought the former Soviet republic new power by letting Russia's energy resources dominate his policy — petropolitics, it is called.

Major issues facing Russia right now are its relationship with the West, namely in terms of energy; its own economic diversification, including its hope to join the WTO; internal instability; the situation in the Balkans with Kosovo's new independence; the country's (limited) support for Iran, also straining relations with the West; and trouble Chechnya. The new president will also face increasing criticism in areas such as Iran and Russia's limiting of gas supplies to Ukraine. When you're dealing with Russia, many foreign policy issues deal with geopolitics.

Russia's undemocratic election

So it looks like Putin has rigged — and won in — yet another Russian election. United Russia appears to have won the parliamentary election overwhelmingly, with turnout up to a suspiciously high 98-99% in some regions. There are many parallels being drawn between Putin's current authoritarian rule and the Soviet era. Come to think of it, Russia — like China — has never really been democratic.

The New York Times:

A day after his party secured an imposing victory in parliamentary elections, President Vladimir V. Putin today declared that the results were a “sign of trust” that had conferred new legitimacy on the government. But European monitors and opposition parties harshly criticized the balloting, saying that it had been neither free nor fair.

The final tally showed that Mr. Putin’s party, United Russia, received 64.1 percent, giving it roughly 315 seats in the 450-seat Duma, or lower house of Parliament, which would be enough votes to amend the constitution. Far behind was the Communist Party, with 11.6 percent, or 57 seats. Two other parties allied with Mr. Putin — the Liberal Democrats and Just Russia — are also to receive seats.
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The end of the parliamentary campaign is expected to intensify discussion in Russia about who will be the next president. United Russia is holding a meeting in two weeks at which Mr. Putin might designate a candidate to run in the presidential election in March, and whoever he names will automatically be the front-runner.

Mr. Putin cannot run again because of a constitutional term limits, though United Russia’s strong performance on Sunday renewed speculation that he might ask the Parliament to amend the constitution.

If he does not, what he will do after March remains a mystery. He has said he wants to continue wielding influence over the nation, but how he will do that — and what his relationship will be with the next president — is unclear.

Even as Mr. Putin was hailing the election, European monitors on Monday were taking a different view, contending that there had been “a clear abuse of power and a clear violation of international commitments and standards.”
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Luc van den Brande of Belgium, leader of the mission from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said Mr. Putin had improperly used the Kremlin to help United Russia. “There are a lot of concerns about the evolution of democracy in the country,” Mr. van den Brande said.
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With the nationalistic Liberal Democratic Party clearing the 7 percent threshold to enter Parliament, one of its new leaders, Andrei K. Lugovoi, is expected to receive a seat.

Mr. Lugovoi is a former K.G.B. officer accused in Britain in the fatal radiation poisoning of Alexander V. Litvinenko. Britain has sought Mr. Lugovoi’s extradition, but Russia has refused. Once he enters Parliament, Mr. Lugovoi would have immunity from prosecution in Russia.
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Overall in Russia, the turnout was about 63 percent.

After the rise of Putin and his ex-KGB buddies, it is no surprise Lugovoy, the prime suspect of an important murder investigation (Litvinenko, the Russian dissident and ex-spy killed mysteriously last year in London), is going to win a parliamentary seat, thus making him immune to any investigation.

Election results have been highly contested and the elections, like many of the happenings in modern day Russia, bare resemblance to those of the Soviet era.

President Putin recently replaced the prime minister with a man people know little about, but is suspected as being just another puppet for the president, who cannot run again this coming election as that would exceed term limits. Even though Putin may make an effort for the presidency during 2012 election, the Russian political elite is already working on a successor to the man who has transformed 'new Russia' into a power worthy of respect — or fear — because of its energy resources.

What a magazine cover says about Putin's Russia

Does the cover of this week's Economist say a lot about Russia under Vladimir Putin?

Atmosphere of photo: Shady and mysterious.
Reality (of today's Russia): True.

Picture of Putin: Emotional status: happy (things are going his way), smiling and smug; empowered (clenched fist). [Is it me or is he quite James Bond-esque?]
Reality: True.

Other elements of cover spread: Secretive and of a deeper political complexity, (people working in the background, secretly... ignore the his fellow ex-KGB men working to help Russia); a new, brighter Russia under Putin.
Reality: True.

In my mind, this cover has a duel meaning. To show Putin as new, fresh, and alive is one of them, with the Soviet era behind him and his country. The other is that while Soviet Communism and all its horrors is gone, the men secretly working in the background might not be — the KGB was part of Soviet Russia, and it continues to be, operating under a new guise, in new clothes.

Maybe the editors at The Economist only intended the photo to illustrate a new Russian leader using old tricks; or perhaps they wanted to show that while Putin is alive, so are aspects of Russia's past. They even might have intended it to show both the old (black and white) Soviet era with Putin and his spies as an element of that, the duel meaning I interpret it as giving off. In short, maybe the cover shows Putin in the forefront and his spies behind him (in a way), or it just shows him with the past behind him.

Overall I think the cover touches most upon the 'neo-KGB state' the magazine fears Russia to be heading into, with Putin leading the charge for the supremacy of Russia, and of himself.

Read Rice's lips: no new Cold War

The long awaited response by the secretary of state to cold exchanges between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US Vice President Dick Cheney has come.

No 'new Cold War', Condi RIce emphatically exclaims.

Rice, who sees Putin on Tuesday, said Washington was committed to working through those differences, notably over U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Europe, Russia's threat to suspend a major military treaty and Moscow's opposition to a U.N. plan for Kosovo independence.

There is also growing U.S. concern about Moscow's treatment of its former Soviet state neighbors and steps Putin has taken to consolidate power in the Kremlin are seen as democratic backsliding as Russia prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections next year.
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She said she would use her meetings in Moscow to impress on Putin and other top Russian officials the need for a missile defense to counter threats from Iran and North Korea and the genuine U.S. desire to work with Russia in building the system transparently.

The missile defense matter is of issue as America charges forward with a new anti-missile defense system that is making many countries feel uncomfortable. Putin has already said how dominant the US is and how it presses for unipolarity in the global politik, and the perceived hegemony around the missile defense system is proof of that.

Russia is asserting power on international stage because of its energy resources. It is a key state geopolitically and influential actor in issues like North Korea and Iran. It is also giving nuclear material to some of the worst nations on the planet, including Myanmar (aka Burma).

Russia: the next top police state?

In the 21st century, there are still plenty of police states around — Syria, Turkmenistan, Lybia, North Korea, Sudan, Burma, arguably Pakistan, and Zimbabwe, to list a few. But can Russia be counted among them? We have seen more and more undemocratic reform and authoritarian power-grabbing — not to mention, journalist and dissident intimidation and killing — by Russian President Putin. Putin seems to think he can never have too much power, and the Russian secret police (FSB, etc.) seem to share that view, as do the many organized crime gangs.

The restriction of freedoms in Russia is only getting worse...
Luke Harding of The Guardian reports:

Supreme court ban on liberal party wipes out opposition to Putin
· Republicans accused of violating electoral law
· Protest rally planned amid fears of a police state

Russia's next parliament is likely to have no genuine opposition after a court in Moscow yesterday banned a leading liberal party from standing in elections.

Russia's supreme court announced that it had liquidated the small Republican party, claiming that it had violated electoral law by having too few members. The party is one of very few left in Russia that criticises President Vladimir Putin.

The move against Russia's opposition came as pro-democracy activists prepared for the latest in a series of anti-government rallies that have infuriated Russia's hardline authorities.
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Critics say the legislation is designed to kill off smaller parties that oppose the Kremlin.

Backstory
Russia's tiny opposition is represented in the current Duma by four or five MPs. Pro-Kremlin parties predominate among the 447 deputies. The small opposition Republican party, banned yesterday, was formed by defectors from the Soviet Communist party. It emerged in 1990 on the wave of liberalism encouraged by then-Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Republican party has one MP, Vladimir Ryzhkov; its other attempts to win seats have repeatedly failed. But it has played a solid role in the liberal opposition. The liberal Yabloko party also has two MPs. Two other anti-Putin MPs sit as independents. In theory, the opposition includes Russia's Communist party and the far-right Liberal Democratic party. In reality, they rarely if ever voice opposition to the Kremlin, observers point out.

Putin: United States is 'dangerous'

Russian President (more like dictator) Vladimir Putin has fully come out of the closet, so to speak, on how he views [what he sees as] the United States' virtually unchecked power.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticised the United States for what he said was its "almost uncontained" use of force around the world.
Washington's "very dangerous" approach to global relations was fuelling a nuclear arms race, he told a security summit in Munich.

Correspondents say the strident speech may signal a more assertive Russia.

The White House said it was "surprised and disappointed" by the Russian president's comments.

I do agree with Putin's assertions of the United States' foreign policy and nuclear actions, often acting against non-prolifiration and, as Putin says, making the global arms race worse. As a side note, why is the White House's response always so lackluster? I mean first the Palestinian agreement and now this, not to mention a history of boring, generic comments on breaking events and comments.

Not long ago US Vice President Cheney made a speech in which he basically demonized Russia — especially on its energy and foreign policies — and actually made some good points. That was one of the few times I agreed with Cheney — on anything. Putin lashed back, comparing the US to a hungry wolf. Of course, Cheney and Putin, both advocates of a strong, almost-authortarian to authoritarian executive government and favoring the neoimperialistic style bullying of foreign states, have gone back and forth for a while now.

Putin has used Russian state owned natural gas company Gazprom to essentially bully states like Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia — all former Soviet republics — in re to energy. Views of Gazprom, however, differ. An effect of various global energy factors, Russia has been climbing back to the might it held in the Cold War days, or so it seems. Because of that new found prosperity, some have said the people of Russia remain content with Putin's authoritarian reforms and limits on free rights. No doubt the validity of such statements also differ (I happen to have talked with someone living in Russia who says people are not too happy with Putin).

Putin's latest comments have reinitiated speculation of a new Cold War. This is what happens in a unipolar world — though that notion in itself is also disputed, especially if one looks at the latest WEF.

Problems with Putin's assertion of the US trying to make a 'unipolar' world:

If the world is unipolar, it will not be for long;

the global power structure may not be unipolar at all, just as the US might not be a superpower (it depends on one's viewpoint);

with forces like globalization, the world is becoming, if anything, more multi-polar;

the US may be powerless to hamper the effects of multi-polarity.
There's a difference between striving for neoimperialism and establishing unipolarity.

Less than a year ago there was a feud between Russia and the US over allegations by the US military that Russia had tipped off and supported Saddam Hussein in the lead-up to the American invasion in 2003. Back then there were calls that a new Cold War was coming. For now the feud exists within the bounds of words and rhetoric, not actions; it is highly unlikely this latest Putin comment will result in anything more than an attempted slap on the wrist by the White House and a rebuttal by VP Cheney — which would happen even if Putin said nothing (it's Cheney, after all).

One thing I do like about Putin was when, in a 60 Minutes interview, he responded to criticism of his reforms crippling what's left of Russian democracy with a criticism of his own of the American electoral system. Though the US is no doubt more democratic than modern day Russia, not the least Russia under Putin.


Song stuck in my head right now: "All The Pretty Faces" by The Killers.

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