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Argos Media

Russia and EU begin summit amid mutual exasperation | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...russia-eu-summit-khabarovsk

EU Russia Eastern Partnership Dmitry Medvedev Fyodor Lukyanov Belarus

shared by Argos Media on 22 May 09 - Cached
  • The summit comes at a time of growing frustration between Brussels and Moscow over a host of issues ranging from energy policy to the war in Georgia. The EU was irritated by Russia's gas war in January with Ukraine and Medvedev's failure to pull Russian troops out of the breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
  • For its part, the Kremlin is annoyed by the EU's attempt earlier this month to improve ties with half a dozen post-Soviet countries. A summit of 33 countries in Prague brought the EU's 27 governments together for the first time with the leaders of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus.
  • Russia believes the EU's "eastern partnership" initiative is a challenge to its own strategic and security interests in a region it regards as its backyard. Medvedev insists that Moscow enjoys what he calls "privileged interests" in states occupying the volatile buffer zone between the EU and the Russian Federation.
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  • Today Medvedev joked with a group of students that the remote summit venue, 3,800 miles from Moscow or 5,300 miles via the epic Trans-Siberian Express, had been chosen to remind the Europeans of Russia's vast size. Several EU delegates moaned when Russia held last year's summit with the EU in western Siberia, Medvedev said."They complained: 'Oh, it's a long way.' We said: 'If you don't like it you can fly somewhere else.' They thought for a bit and said: 'OK, we're ready,'" Medvedev said. He added: "They [the Europeans] should understand how big Russia is and should feel its greatness. On the other hand, we also want a partnership with the EU. It's important for us to get together."
  • "Russia and EU relations are in stalemate. There is a serious lack of mutual understanding, a lack of willingness to understand each other, and a lack of strategic common values," Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, told the Guardian.He went on: "Relations with Obama and the US are now better. At the same time relations with the EU are getting worse. Since the 1990s Russian-EU relations have been governed by the assumption that Russia would go the European way without applying for membership. This model is now exhausted. They need a new model."
  • According to Lukyanov, the Kremlin was furious after the EU pressured Belarus this month not to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia. "The message was: choose Russia or not Russia. It was absolutely unnecessary from the European side. Alexander Lukashenko [Belarus's president] wasn't going to recognise them anyway for his own reasons," Lukyanov said.
Pedro Gonçalves

Russia backs EU, not U.S., role in Georgia | International | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSTRE5741LC20090805

Georgia Abkhazia Ossetia Russia EU US

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 05 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Moscow welcomes the work of EU monitors in Georgia, deployed in the Caucasus state a year ago after the Russian invasion, but is opposed to the United States having a role, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.
  • Under a peace deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the European Union has sent 240 unarmed monitors to Georgia to oversee a fragile ceasefire. Georgia now wants the United States to join the monitoring. "The presence of EU monitors on Georgian territories bordering South Ossetia and Abkhazia is an important stabilizing factor and we support such a presence," Lavrov told state-run television channel Vesti-24.
  • Georgia, keen to get Western support in its stand-off with Russia, asked the United States last month to join the EU monitoring mission -- although the EU itself has not made any such request to Washington. Lavrov said the Georgian request was part of a plan to drag the United States into a confrontation. "The idea is absolutely clear and we honestly told this to our U.S. colleagues," Lavrov said. "This is all about dragging Americans into Georgia and pitching them against the Russian military." "After that, the Georgian masters of provocation... will try doing their traditional job," he added. "The risks of this are clear, Europe and the United States understand them."
Argos Media

Foreign Policy: Don't Forget Georgia - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...cms.php

Georgia US NATO Russia

shared by Argos Media on 13 Apr 09 - Cached
  • some analysts have been wondering whether the Obama administration will seek to distance itself from the government in Tbilisi in an effort to score points with Moscow and differentiate itself from its predecessor. Indeed, a clear U.S. focus on "resetting" relations with Russia, as Vice President Biden said in early February in Munich, raises questions for Georgia. Will Washington sacrifice closer relations with Tbilisi in order to warm up to Moscow? This would be a mistake.
  • Georgia already paid a price when NATO allies, meeting last April in Bucharest, failed to offer Tbilisi (and Kiev) a Membership Action Plan; that decision was likely interpreted in Moscow as a green light to engage in more reckless behavior within the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and toward Tbilisi.
  • Yes, the United States does need to think carefully before launching a serious effort to rearm Georgia. The obvious yet painful reality is that Georgia simply is no match militarily for Russia, and we should not pretend otherwise. Giving less military support might also reinforce the U.S. message that the military option for resolving the South Ossetia and Abkhazia problems is out of the question.
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  • There is no guarantee that backing off support for Georgia, whether on NATO or more broadly, would lead to improved ties with Russia. The days when U.S. relations with the states in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova) are viewed through a Russian prism should be long over.
  • Supporting Georgia's NATO aspirations, however, is a matter of principle. Last April in Bucharest, the alliance declared, "[We] welcome Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO." Even while aiming to reset relations with Russia, President Obama has pledged to uphold the principle that "countries who seek and aspire to join NATO are able to join NATO." For NATO's own credibility, Russia cannot be granted a de facto veto over other countries' aspirations for membership. Nor should wishful thinking of better relations with Russia get in the way of Georgia's aspirations, which the United States has encouraged.
Pedro Gonçalves

Georgia: expect storms ahead | Simon Tisdall | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...georgia-storms-ahead

Georgia Russia EU

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • For energy-poor western Europe, Georgia is a vital conduit for Caspian basin oil and gas exports that are not, for now at least, under Moscow's manipulative control. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin views Georgia very much as part of its backyard, a "near abroad" property (though the phrase is not much used these days) that should conform to Russian interests. Europe believes it belongs inside its post-Soviet, liberal pro-market "eastern neighbourhood".
  • The idea Georgia might one day join Nato – it already contributes through the Partnership for Peace scheme – and the EU is anathema to Russian nationalists. It is not coincidental that since 2008, when Putin sent his tanks deep into Georgian territory in support of independence for the breakaway satraps of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia has effectively controlled about one-fifth of Georgia's total land mass.
  • The problem for both sides of this strategic equation is that Georgia's leaders – they might better be termed overlords – tend not to do what they are told, even by putative friends. Saakashvili's authoritarian, sometimes confrontational style, pockmarked by serial rights abuses including a recent prison torture scandal, has embarrassed his Brussels backers. The west wants a stable Georgian government, not one engaged in a personalised, potentially dangerous feud with the Putin regime.Yet the man behind the Georgian Dream opposition, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, could also prove an awkward customer, should he be confirmed as prime minister. Ivanishvili made his money, lots and lots of it, during Russia's corrupt oligarch era. He still reportedly holds a chunk of Gazprom shares. Saakashvili predictably labelled him a Kremlin stooge, a charge he denies.
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  • "Greek scholar Ilia Roubanis has called Georgian politics 'pluralistic feudalism', a competition between a patriarchal leader who enjoys uncontested rule over the country and a leader of the opposition bidding to unseat him and acquire the same [...]
  • Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Oct 12
     
    "For energy-poor western Europe, Georgia is a vital conduit for Caspian basin oil and gas exports that are not, for now at least, under Moscow's manipulative control. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin views Georgia very much as part of its backyard, a "near abroad" property (though the phrase is not much used these days) that should conform to Russian interests. Europe believes it belongs inside its post-Soviet, liberal pro-market "eastern neighbourhood"."
Argos Media

Russia expels two diplomats as Nato begins military exercises in Georgia | World news |... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ato-military-exercises-georgia

NATO Russia Dmitry Rogozin Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili

shared by Argos Media on 06 May 09 - Cached
  • Nato today began a series of controversial military exercises in Georgia following an apparent failed uprising at a Georgian army base yesterday and Moscow's expulsion of two Nato diplomats this morning.
  • Russia said it was expelling Isabelle Francois, the Canadian head of Nato's Moscow information office, and a worker at her office.The move was in retaliation for last week's expulsion of two Russian diplomats, who had been accused of spying, from Nato's Brussels HQ, Russia's foreign ministry said.
  • Yesterday, Saakashvili claimed to have thwarted a Russian-backed mutiny at the Mukhrovani army base near the capital, Tbilisi.Russia dismissed the claim as "absurd" and suggested Saakashvili "send for a doctor".
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  • Dmitry Rogozin, the hawkish Russian ambassador to Nato, said Nato should cancel the exercises."Nato needs to show flexibility and hear our arguments. The worst thing is that this organisation is becoming more and more unpredictable," he said. "Nato's behaviour is not decent, stable or appropriate."
  • The exercises take place against the backdrop of a growing military buildup on both sides of Georgia's tense and disputed borders with the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.Russia has beefed up its military presence in both territories, and last week signed an agreement giving its army full control of border security.
  • The EU and Nato have strongly protested against the move, saying it is in breach of a peace agreement signed last August by Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozvy.Under the deal, Medvedev promised to pull Russian troops back to their positions before last summer's war over South Ossetia.
  • Saakashvili's position in Georgia, meanwhile, is increasingly under threat following a series of protests by the country's opposition.Opposition leaders have dismissed yesterday's apparent army mutiny as a fabrication by Saakashvili designed to discredit his internal enemies.
  • Today's exercises involve more than 1,000 soldiers from a dozen Nato member states and partner nations.Several countries, including neighbouring Armenia, have recently pulled out of the exercises, apparently fearing Russian displeasure.
Pedro Gonçalves

Russia and Ukraine in Intensifying Standoff - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...28crimea.html

Russia Ukraine

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 28 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Late last month, the Ukrainian police briefly detained Russian military personnel who were driving truckloads of missiles through this port city, as if they were smugglers who had come ashore with a haul of contraband. Local officials, it seemed, were seeking to make clear that this was no longer friendly terrain.
  • President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia denounced Ukraine this month for “anti-Russian” policies, citing in particular its “incessant attempts” to harass Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol. Mr. Medvedev condemned Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership and its support for Georgia, and said he would not send an ambassador to Ukraine.
  • The Ukrainians have not only briefly detained Russian military personnel transporting missiles on several occasions this summer. They also expelled a Russian diplomat who oversees naval issues and barred officers from the F.S.B., the Russian successor to the K.G.B., from working in Sevastopol.
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  • The current concern is that a spark in Crimea — however unlikely — could touch off a violent confrontation or even the kind of fighting that broke out between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia. The situation is particularly uneasy because the population in Crimea is roughly 60 percent ethnic Russian and would prefer that the peninsula separate from Ukraine and be part of Russia. (Sevastopol has an even higher proportion of ethnic Russians.)
  • People have been upset by new Ukrainian government policies that require the use of the Ukrainian language, rather than Russian, in government activities, including some courses in public schools. Throughout downtown Sevastopol last week, residents set up booths to gather signatures on petitions in an effort to overturn the regulations.
  • And on Monday, Ukrainian independence day, ethnic Russians in Crimea held anti-Ukrainian demonstrations.
  • Sergei P. Tsekov, a senior politician in Crimea who heads the main ethnic Russian communal organization, said he hoped that Russia would wholeheartedly endorse Crimean separatism just as it did the aspirations of South Ossetia and another Georgian enclave, Abkhazia.
  • Crimean separatists have been encouraged by prominent politicians in Russia, including Moscow’s mayor, Yuri M. Luzhkov, and a senior member of Parliament, Konstantin F. Zatulin, both of whom have been barred from Ukraine by the government because of their assertions that Sevastopol belongs to Russia.The Kremlin has not publicly backed the separatists, though it has declared that the rights of ethnic Russians in Crimea must not be violated.
Pedro Gonçalves

Barack Obama urges Russia not to interfere in neighbouring states | World news | guardi... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...obama-russia-first-trip

US Russia Obama

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 08 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Barack Obama today set out his vision for a new post-cold war world, and urged Russia not to interfere in neighbouring states and to move on "from old ways of thinking".
  • In a keynote speech during his first trip to Russia as US president, Obama called on Moscow to stop viewing America as an adversary. The assumption that Russia and the US were eternal antagonists was "a 20th-century view" rooted in the past, he said.
  • Obama delivered a tough, though implicit, critique of Kremlin foreign policy, rejecting the claim it has "privileged interests" in post-Soviet countries. He said the 19th-century doctrine of spheres of influence and "great powers forging competing blocs" was finished."In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonising other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chessboard are over," he said, speaking to graduates from Moscow's New Economic School.
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  • "America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia."
  • Crucially, though, Obama indicated that Washington would not tolerate another Russian invasion of Georgia. Russia is winding up full-scale military exercises next to the Georgian border amid ominous predictions that a second conflict in the Caucasus could erupt this summer.
  • On Monday Obama reaffirmed Georgia's sovereignty – severely undermined by last year's war and Moscow's subsequent unilateral recognition of rebel-held Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. Today Obama defended "state sovereignty", describing it as "a cornerstone of international order".
  • He also said that Georgia and Ukraine had a right to choose their own foreign policy and leaders, and could join Nato if they wanted. Russia is deeply opposed to Ukraine's and Georgia's accession, and wants the White House to rule out their future membership. Today Obama responded by saying that Nato sought collaboration with Russia, not confrontation.
Argos Media

Foreign Policy: Don't Forget Georgia - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...cms.php

Georgia US South Ossetia Abkhazia

shared by Argos Media on 13 Apr 09 - Cached
  • as Vice President Biden said in Munich and as President Obama made clear during his recent trip to Europe, the United States must never recognize South Ossetian and Abkhazian independence.
  • That said, bringing those separatist regions back under Georgian control won't happen any time soon. The hope is that Georgia, through political and economic reform, becomes an attractive place for South Ossetians and Abkhazians to some day want to join. That will take time and patience on the part of the Georgian leadership, not traits often associated with Saakashvili.
  • Finally, the United States has to fix the international impression that its policy is support for "Misha first, Georgia second." It would be a mistake to dump Saakashvili to support any other candidates -- that's for the Georgians themselves to decide. But America should support processes that encourage a level playing field and avoid picking favorites. To that end, the return to Georgia of former U.N. Ambassador Irakli Alasania to join the opposition against Saakashvili has increased the possibility of more effective checks and balances against the government.
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