Vladimir Paranoid Snarls, Moonbat Swoons

Bear baiting
Washington and its allies are playing a foolish game by casting Putin's economically resurgent Russia as a potential security threat
To say that Russia's image in the British and American media is negative would be quite an understatement. Read press reports on the country and the impression you will get is of a semi-rogue state run by a power-crazed 21st-century tsar, who oppresses dissidents at home and threatens countries abroad.

[....]

Heh. Glimpses of the power-crazed 21st century tsar, oppression of dissidents and threatening countries abroad.

What is missing from this chilling narrative, however, is that Putin, the former KGB agent dismissed as a new Stalin, saved Russia from disintegration and Yugoslavia- style mayhem. He succeeded in putting an end to the vortex of European and American foreign interventions that transformed his country from the world's mightiest power to a ludicrous caricature epitomised by a drunk president . . . .

[....]

Read the rest of moonbat Soumaya Ghannoushi's journalistic hummer at The Guardian.

Of course.

Hunter? Kestrel? PuffHo?

Vladimir Paranoid's Democracy Projekt

The American Left can only dream.

Kremlin accused of fixing presidential poll

• State workers ordered to vote for Putin's protege
  
• Ballot boxes 'to be stuffed' after polls close tomorrow

The Kremlin is planning to falsify the results of tomorrow's presidential election by compelling millions of public-sector workers to vote and by fraudulently boosting the official turnout, the Guardian has been told by independent sources.

Governors, regional officials and even headteachers have been instructed to deliver a landslide majority for Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's first deputy prime minister, whom President Vladimir Putin has endorsed as his successor.

Officials have been told they need to secure a 68-70% turnout in this weekend's poll, with about 72% voting for Medvedev. Independent analysts believe the real turnout will be much lower, with 25-50% of the electorate taking part.

The Kremlin is planning to bridge the gap through widespread fraud, diplomats and other independent sources have told the Guardian. Local election officials are preparing to stuff ballot boxes once polls have closed, they believe, with regional officials giving inflated tallies to Russia's central election commission.

Additionally, public-sector workers including teachers, students and doctors have been told to vote tomorrow or risk serious consequences. Parents have even been warned that if they fail to turn up their children might suffer at school.

Marina Dashenkova, of the Golos independent poll monitoring organisation, said complaints to its hotline were following a similar pattern to those made during the parliamentary poll in December. Forced use of absentee ballots, pressure on state workers and the illegal use of state resources to promote Medvedev were the most common complaints, she said.

Renat Suleymanov, secretary of the Communist party in Novosibirsk region, said state workers in schools, libraries, nurseries and doctors' clinics as well as employees of private companies were "coming under intense pressure" to vote in tightly controlled conditions at their place of work using absentee ballots.

In Vladivostok, Vladimir Bespalov, a member of the local parliament, said he had acquired a document showing that bureaucrats were told to ensure a 65% turnout and a vote of more than 65% for Medvedev. The document laid out precise figures for certain districts, he said, with some expected to deliver 88% for the Kremlin candidate. "Clearly, we are talking about instructions to bureaucrats who are expected to deliver a victory for Medvedev that corresponds to pre-planned results," he said. "According to my information, if these figures are not reached then the people responsible can expect punishment right up to being sacked."

In Niznhny Novgorod, there were reports of students being told to vote for Medvedev or face being thrown out of dormitories. Vladimir Primachyok, a campaign official with presidential candidate and Communist veteran Gennady Zyuganov, the chief rival to Medvedev, claimed students in Irkutsk were being forced to vote under the supervision of college officials. "All of this is a blatant violation of electoral laws," he said.

The purpose of the falsification is to boost the legitimacy of Medvedev, 42, who takes over from Putin in May. Analysts concede that Medvedev would have won the election anyway, but on a much smaller turnout.

"In some places they will put in extra ballots. In other places election officials will give data that just doesn't exist," Mikhail Delyagin, an economist and the director of Moscow's Institute of Globalisation Problems, told the Guardian.

"Everybody knows what to do," said the political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky. "The technology has been proved over the past four years. Once the polls close unused ballot papers are taken, filled in for Medvedev of course, and thrown into the box. The boxes are then stamped, and reopened a second later. Then they start to count."

Asked why the Kremlin elite felt the need to fix the election, Belkovsky said: "They can't be Saddam Hussein or the Chinese leadership. The idea is to gain legitimacy in the west."

One western diplomat said that the administration was involved in a complicated "numbers game" designed to ensure that Medvedev won a clear first round victory in Sunday's vote, but didn't exceed the 71.3% won by Putin in 2004. There would be little "systematic overt rigging" during voting, the diplomat said. Instead the figures would be "massaged" during the accounting and tabulation process, he suggested. "In a country of this size how do you monitor that?" he asked.

The Kremlin has shrugged off accusations that it manipulated last December's poll - despite the fact that in several areas, including Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus, 99% of the population "voted" for Putin's United Russia party. The turnout in Chechnya was 99.6%. Putin said the result was "perfectly objective".

This week the leading Soviet dissident Sergei Kovalev wrote an open letter to Putin, describing Russia's elections as nothing more than a "tasteless farce being played out by untalented directors on the entire boundless Russian stage". "Not even Stalin could have dreamed of the Chechen record," he added.

Medvedev is competing against Zyuganov, ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and Andrey Bogdanov, a Kremlin-supporting independent. The Kremlin prevented Mikhail Kasyanov, the only genuinely democratic challenger, from taking part.

The Communists have repeatedly complained of overwhelming media bias in the run-up to the poll. State TV has lavishly covered Medvedev's daily activities and his tour of Russia's far east.

In a televised address yesterday Putin urged Russians to vote. "The voice of each one of you will be important," he said, adding that they needed to turn out so that the next president could be "effective and confident".

'I want to vote the way I want'

Schoolteacher, Novosibirsk

"They got us teachers together in the school a couple of weeks ago and told us to take absentee ballots and vote at work. They told us election day will be a working day. A few young teachers asked, 'What about freedom of expression?' They were told, 'If you want freedom, go and look for work in a different place.'

"I have a colleague who works in a different school in the city and she says the same thing happened to them. She took an absentee ballot and showed it to her boss and they ticked her off the list.

"They want people to vote at work because it will be easier for them to control the process there. Since the meeting in our school they have constantly been coming to us and asking if we have taken our absentee ballots. I refused to take one. I'm going to vote in the place where I live. I want to vote the way I want and not how somebody tells me.

"I've heard that the same thing is going on in kindergartens all across the city. They're being told to take absentee ballots and vote in a particular place, all together.

"If they found out I had been talking to you they would sack me."

The Kooky Kos Kiddyz were unavailable for comment.

Via The Guardian

The Good Neighbor Policy Of Vladimir Paranoid

Russia Could 'Point Warheads' at Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters on Tuesday that Russia could aim missiles at Ukraine if leaders in Kiev decide to join NATO and host part of the alliance's controversial anti-missile shield.

He made the warning at a news conference in Moscow after a meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko that settled a long dispute over the price of natural gas.

NATO membership has been a hot issue within Ukraine recently, and Putin waded into the debate with ambiguous language, saying the decision was Ukraine's business but might raise a "question for Russia of the need for retaliatory actions."

He went on: "It's frightening not just to talk about, but even to think about, that in response to such deployment, the possibility of such deployments -- and one can't theoretically exclude these deployments -- that Russia will have to point its warheads at Ukrainian territory."

The statement was the clearest warning so far that Russia would resist the march of NATO membership to the Black Sea.

Yushchenko countered by saying that Ukraine has the right to determine its own foreign and defense policies, adding that the Ukrainian constitution prohibits the deployment of foreign bases on its territory.

"You understand well that everything that Ukriane does in this direction is not in any way directed at any third country, including Russia," he said.

Power Games Old and New

Relations between Russia and its former Soviet satellites have been difficult since the end of the Cold War, and in recent years Russia's state-run energy monopolies, like Gazprom, have emphasized their power over its impoverished neighbors (more...) by ending a long era of cheap, subsidized oil and natural gas.

Two years ago Gazprom turned off gas supplies to Ukraine in the middle of a hard winter to insist on a steep price increase. European critics noted that the move looked political (more...), because it followed the pro-Western Orange Revolution that swept Yushchenko to power and steered Ukrainian politics away from Moscow.

It's not nice to dis kameraden Putie.

Kremlin leaders announced separately on Tuesday that Putin would accept an invitation to attend a NATO summit in Romania this April. By then he'll be out of office as president, but the missile shield idea -- a US project extended to allies in Europe under NATO auspices -- has made him prickly about western influence in Russia's former backyard. He's said the presence of missile-defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic would be a threat to Russian security.

Vladimir Paranoid is more of a threat to Russia's security than any missile-defense sites.

A Kiev-based political analyst, Oleksiy Haran, said Putin's posture was anachronistic. "This (warhead) statement was made in the spirit of the Cold War," he told the Associated Press, adding that Putin probably wanted to stoke anti-NATO sentiment within Ukraine and possibly within Russia, where voters will elect a new president on March 2.

Stoke Russian anti-NATO sentiment prior to a free and democratic election; the same election with the guaranteed outcome of Dmitry Medvedev becoming the next president?

Classic paranoia, baby.

Via Spiegel International

There's Diplomacy; Then There's Diplomacy

Russia lawmaker warns Poland, Czechs on U.S. shield
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Poland and the Czech Republic could become targets for the Russian military if they agree to host elements of a U.S. missile defense system, Russian news agencies quoted a senior Russian lawmaker as saying on Monday.

The comments by Konstantin Kosachyov, a Kremlin ally who heads the international affairs committee in the lower house of parliament, follow progress in discussions between Poland and United States on the proposed shield.

"Connections between any other third countries, in this case, Poland and the Czech Republic, make these countries hostages and participants in the situation," Kosachyov was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying.

"They will be making a choice, a strategic choice, that will affect the security of these countries, because the relevant U.S. systems will become a subject of control and, possibly, in the worst case, a target for Russian defense systems," Kosachyov was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

Moscow disputes U.S. statements that the missiles are intended to protect against future threats from rogue states such as Iran. It says the shield is a threat to Russian security.

Russia's objections are expected to top the agenda when Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk visits Moscow on February 8.

The U.S. wants to locate 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar installation in Czech Republic under the $3.5 billion plan.

On February 1, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States supports modernizing Poland's air defenses, a key Polish demand for hosting part of the planned system.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered Washington access to Russian data on missile launches if the United States drops its missile shield plan. The Pentagon regards the radar offer as a supplement to its shield, not a substitute.

(Reporting by Conor Sweeney; editing by Robert Woodward)

Via Reuters

Code Pink was unavailable for comment.

See also: Polish PM Tusk rejects Russian ballistic threat

Poland would like NATO base

Poland expects deal on U.S. shield in February

On Winning Friends And Influencing People

Russia rattles its depleted sabre in the Atlantic
By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow

The Kremlin has flexed its military might off the European coastline as Russian warships and nuclear bombers test fired missiles close to the Iberian peninsula during the first major military manouevres in the Atlantic since the Cold War.

The RAF and the Norwegian Air Force were forced to scramble fighter jets to shadow Russian long-range bombers headed for the Bay of Biscay where vessels from the Northern and Black Sea fleets have begun three days of exercises.

The manouevres are the latest indication of Soviet premier President Vladimir Putin's intent to project Russia's growing military prowess to the international community and to pander to growing nationalist sentiment at home.

The Russian Air Force said that two Tu160 bombers, known in the West as Blackjacks, would conduct tactical missile launches off the Spanish and Portugese coastlines. Both countries, Russia said, had been informed in advance.

Earlier, the guided missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, took part in a live fire exercise that a navy spokesman said was 100 per cent successful.

Although Russia gave warning of the exercises to Nato countries last year, the operation is likely to cause an element of disquiet in the West - albeit more for political than military reasons.

As East-West relations have soured, Mr Putin responded last year by ordering a resumption of long-range bomber patrols in international airspace for the first time since the Soviet era.

He also threatened to retrain part of Russia's considerable nuclear arsenal on European targets if a proposed US missile defence shield, to be built in Poland and the Czech Republic by 2012, is not scrapped.

Yet for all the posturing, Russia still carries a small stick militarily - big enough to impress ordinary Russians at a time when Mr Putin is plotting to retain power behind the scenes after elections this March but too puny to frighten the West just yet.

While the president has sharply increased defence spending and commissioned a new generation of nuclear missiles, Russia's defence budget is a tenth of the United States' and is also smaller than Britain.

The Atlantic exercises - described by a Russian navy source as "the biggest exercise of its kind in the area since Soviet times" - have also shown that Russia's conventional military hardware remain in a sorry state.

For unexplained reasons, a number of ships meant to participate stayed at home and those that did sail are in poor condition. The Moskva is 30 years old, while the Admiral Kuznetzov, Russia's rickety aircraft carrier, spends much of its time in dry docks undergoing repairs.

In a token gesture of East-West co-operation, the French navy has agreed to send an anti-submarine frigate to join the exercises. The Russian flotilla had earlier docked in Toulon.

Given Toulon's status of being a major French naval installation, I'm sure the Soviet Russian high command arranged this visit for purely altruistic reasons - a cultural exchange, so to speak.

While Russia's military prowess may still be dubious, its growing status as an energy superpower is not. Russia and Serbia yesterday agreed a pipeline deal that will boost Moscow's energy control over Europe.

Last week a similar deal was agreed with Bulgaria.

Via The Telegraph

The Bush administration's Russian expert was too busy plotting the demise of Israel to comment.

The Irresistible Lure of Putin's Russia

Repatriation Plan Appeals To Few Ethnic Russians
The first year of an extended program to repatriate ethnic Russians living abroad has failed to produce the wave of immigrants that proponents touted ahead of its approval.

Kremlin officials were bullish in 2006 when President Vladimir Putin unveiled the ambitious plan.

Early backers had predicted that tens of thousands of people would resettle in Russia in the first months of the six-year project, helping curb Russia's staggering demographic crisis.

They said some 100,000 repatriates would be lured in short order to the 12 pilot regions spearheading the repatriation program. But within months of the January 2007 launch, first-year estimates fell to 50,000, and then to 25,000. By year-end, just 143 ethnic-Russian families had picked up stakes and made the move to Russia.

Official figures show that 13 families settled in Russia's western Lipetsk Oblast. Another 110 members of the Dukhobor religious minority emigrated from Georgia to central Tambov Oblast, and fewer than 200 people moved to Russia's Kaliningrad exclave. Russia's Regnum news agency quoted a Krasnoyarsk Krai labor official as saying in December that two single men were the only immigrants to the region in the course of the year.

Putin's plan is primarily intended to help counter high mortality rates and low birthrates that are believed to be draining the Russian population of some 700,000 people a year.

Government officials also expressed optimism that the project would progressively squeeze foreign migrant workers out of Russia's labor market. Under new immigration quotas released last week, just 1.8 million foreigners will be legally authorized to work in Russia this year, compared to 6 million in 2007.

But Russian authorities may find it extremely difficult -- if not impossible -- to achieve the project's objectives.

"All pessimistic predictions regarding [the repatriation plan] have come true," wrote the Moscow-based "Vremya novostei" daily on December 19. "The first year of implementation has clearly demonstrated that our former Soviet fellow citizens do not want to be repatriated under the conditions set by the Russian authorities."

And most would not want to be repatriated under any conditions.

Red Tape And Local Resistance

Government officials refuse to acknowledge failure. Federal Migration Service Director Konstantin Romodanovsky recently said he expects some 90,000 people to move to Russia and for another 59 regions to join the federal repatriation program in 2008.

But those numbers are already looking unrealistic.

Russia's official "Rossiiskaya gazeta" newspaper noted on January 11 that Siberia's Irkutsk Oblast, which last year offered to take some 9,000 repatriates, has so far received only three applications. Not a single potential repatriate has applied for resettlement in the Far Eastern Amur Oblast, which was expecting some 300 people last year. Both the Irkutsk and Amur oblasts are among the 12 pilot regions designated by Putin.

Vadim Gustov, the chairman of the State Duma's CIS Affairs Committee, blames the belated implementation of Putin's repatriation plan primarily on state bureaucracy. In comments made to "Vremya novostei" in December, he said no genuine recruitment campaign could be conducted among ethnic Russians until after the necessary official documentation related to the program became available in September.

Although the first repatriates were expected nine months ago, the Federal Migration Service -- the agency responsible for implementing the program -- did not open offices abroad until later in the year.

[....]

Read it all at RFE/RL

Kameraden Joseph Vissarionovich Jugashvili was unavailable for comment.

In Vladimir Paranoid's Paradise . . .

Court Charges Beslan Victims' Group With 'Extremism'
The winter holidays are a difficult time for the many families that lost relatives in the hostage drama that struck the small North Ossetian town of Beslan in September 2004.

For the Voice of Beslan, a victims' group led by women who lost children in the siege, this year's holidays brought further distress: a court summons from neighboring Ingushetia, where local prosecutors had filed charges accusing the organization of "extremist" activities.

"We received a telegram around the New Year inviting us to a Nazran court," says Ella Kesayeva, one of the group's leaders. "We think this trial was specially commissioned by someone. A lot has been happening lately around Voice of Beslan. What's happening now is one more attempt to pressure a civil group that is carrying out its own investigation."

More than three years after the siege, many questions remain unanswered. For Voice of Beslan and other groups, the key detail is who sparked the violence that brought the three-day siege to its deadly conclusion -- the hostage takers, most from the North Caucasus, demanding a military withdrawal from Chechnya, or the federal forces brought in to negotiate an end to the crisis.

After a private investigation, Voice of Beslan says it believes it was federal security forces outside the school, using flamethrowers and tanks against the school, that caused the blast that killed many of the 1,000 hostages and triggered a bloody battle with the militants.

Two reports have backed these claims -- one penned by the North Ossetian parliament's investigative commission, the other by Russian politician and explosives expert Yury Savelyev.

As best as we can tell, none of the parties involved with preparing the reports have come down with a case of influenzae Sovietski. So far.

The State Duma has yet to release its own final official report on the events. But the chief parliamentary investigator, Aleksandr Torshin, has suggested that militants were responsible for the explosion.

No 'Official' Account

The large number of parallel investigations conducted into the Beslan siege illustrates the extreme controversy and high political stakes surrounding what remains the most horrifying event in recent Russian history.

Voice of Beslan says its campaign to bring senior officials to trial for botching the Beslan rescue operation has angered many. The group's trial -- currently due to begin on January 15 -- is not the first time Voice of Beslan has encountered trouble with the authorities.

A North Ossetian court ordered the organization to close down in December, claiming that Kesayeva was not its leader and that a former member who claimed to be the leader of the group should replace her. That ruling was subsequently annulled by the Russian Supreme Court.

This time, prosecutors' charges are tied to an open letter accusing President Vladimir Putin of covering up the truth about the carnage to protect top officials.

"We are guilty of electing a president who solves problems with the help of tanks, flamethrowers, and gas," Voice of Beslan said in the text, posted in 2005 on its website. "But it's not our fault that the global political elite supports our president, who has become a backer of criminals."

The charges fall under Russia's 2007 amended law on extremism, which broadens the definition of extremist activities to include "slander of public officials" and "humiliating national pride." The legislation can be applied retroactively and has been used to investigate journalists, human rights activists, and opposition figures.

Such mishegas. This makes the Patriot Act look like a simple walk in the park. Not that the Kooky Kult of Koslam, the gangs at PuffHo and Digg, or other leftists would notice.

Regional Animosity

Why authorities might seek to shut down Voice of Beslan is obvious. Russian officials have shown little compunction about using the extremism legislation to crack down on their critics. What is less clear, however, is why the charges come from Ingushetia, rather than Moscow -- and more than two years after the text's publication.

[...]

Read it all at RFE/RL

Condi? Dubya? Shrillary? Obama? Silky? Rudy? Fred? Huckster? Leading presidential contender Ron Paul?


September 1, 2004. The first day of school.
UPDATE: Dr. Rusty Shackleford of The Jawa Report links. Thank you!

Also at Also at A Tangled Web

What A Joke

Even though al-Gore is a loser, they'll be dancing in the streets of Koslamistan for sure.

Putin named Time 'Person of the Year'
New York - Russian President Vladimir Putin was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year."

The 2007 honor went to the Russian leader because of Putin's "extraordinary feat of leadership in taking a country that was in chaos and bringing it stability," said Richard Stengel, Time's managing editor.

So, TIME gives its stamp of approval to this sort of leadership?

Others who were in the running included Nobel Prize-winner Al Gore and author J.K. Rowling.

This year's honor was a return to the magazine's tradition of picking an individual rather than last year's choice of anyone creating or using content on the World Wide Web.

Previous winners have also included Bono, President George W. Bush and Amazon.com CEO and founder Jeff Bezos.

As were noted humanitarians such as the Austrian corporal and Josef Stalin.

Like the NY Times, these people have no shame.

Via The AP

Previously Russia threatens to nuke Poland & Czech Republic

Also at A Tangled Web

And The 2008 Nobel Peace Prize Goes To . . . .

This comes as no great surprise and we can expect more like it from Soviet dictator Russian president Vladimir Paranoid and his ilk. And it shouldn't be long before the Koslings and the Leftisphere jump onboard.

Russia Issues Nuclear Threat
Russia's nuclear weapons chief threatened Monday to target a planned US missile defence shield in central Europe if Washington fails to take into account Moscow's worries, the Interfax news agency reported.

General Nikolai Solovtsov, head of strategic missile forces, said that such a decision could be taken if the US shield is seen to "undermine the Russian nuclear deterrent capability."

In that case, "I do not exclude... the missile defence shield sites in Poland and the Czech Republic being chosen as targets for some of our intercontinental ballistic missiles," Solovtsov said, according to Interfax.

Washington says the plans to install radar in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor rockets in Poland would guard against theoretical missile strikes from "rogue" nations such as Iran, without denting Russia's massive nuclear offensive arsenal.

But Moscow claims the United States is exaggerating the threat from Iran and describes the shield as the thin end of a wedge aimed at changing the current balance of military power.

On Saturday, the Russian chief of staff, General Yury Baluyevsky, warned that the launch of US interceptor missiles could accidentally trigger a Russian retaliatory strike.

And the resulting vaporization of Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad would be considered an 'accidental' response.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk denounced the comments as "unacceptable" and said that "no declaration of this kind will influence Polish-American negotiations."

Solovtsov, speaking hours after state television showed images of a ballistic missile being test fired from a submerged submarine at a target on the other side of Russia, said the United States was untrustworthy.

"If the Americans signed a treaty with us that they would only deploy 10 anti-missile rockets in Poland and one radar in the Czech Republic and will never put anything else there, then we could deal with this," he said.

"However they won't sign, they just tell us verbally, 'We won't threaten you'."

"They already cheated Russia once," he said, referring to NATO expansion into former Soviet-dominated territory after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. "Verbally they already told us that when we re-unite Germany there won't be one NATO soldier there. Now where are they?"

East-West relations are increasingly strained as Russia and NATO countries argue over how to ensure security in the post-Cold War landscape.

Russia froze compliance last week with the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, which imposes strict limits on deployment of troops around the country.

The Foreign Ministry offered reassurance that Russia had "no current plans to accumulate massive armaments on our neighbours' borders."

However the decision was criticised by NATO, the United States and other Western powers.

Kameraden! Nobody forced your former slave-states to join or ally with NATO. They did so out of appreciation for your 50 years of kindness and generosity.

And in remembrance of your reassurances from 1943 on that the Soviet army had simply . . . liberated them.

Via Spacewars.com

H/T The NoisyRoom

Also at A Tangled Web

Democracy At Work

When discussing the G8 and the Soviet Union today's Russia during an interview six months ago, Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves offered that, ...if you're not a member of the G8, it's not difficult to call for anyone to be thrown out. But I certainly wouldn't call it the organization of industrialized democracies anymore.

Interviewer: What would you call it?

President Ilves: Seven industrial democracies and one country brought in for reasons that have lost their relevance.

Putin to be PM in future Russia government
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday he was ready to become prime minister if his close ally Dmitry Medvedev succeeds him, giving Putin a way to keep a grip on power after he leaves the Kremlin.

A 42-year-old lawyer with no political base of his own, Medvedev is virtually certain to win next March's presidential election since most Russians will vote for whoever the highly popular Putin endorses.

"If Russian citizens express their confidence in Dmitry Medvedev and elect him as the country's president, I will be ready to head the government," Putin told a congress of his United Russia party held near Moscow's Red Square.

"(We) shouldn't be ashamed or afraid of transferring the key powers of the country, the destiny of Russia to the hands of such a man," Putin added in his speech.

You'll get no argument from the Koslings, Putie. They know democracy when they see it.

Medvedev, 42, was later adopted by the congress as United Russia's presidential candidate. Delegates voted 478-1 in a sober, Soviet-style ceremony held without debate.

Is there any other way???

In his brief acceptance speech, Medvedev listed priorities such as strengthening Russia's position in the world, preserving the Russian nation, looking after the young and the old.

"All this is in Vladimir Putin's strategy. I will be guided by this strategy, if I am elected president," Medvedev said.

"But carrying out an idea can only be successful with the participation of its author. I have no doubt that in the future Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) will use all his resources, all his influence in Russia and abroad for the benefit of Russia."

[....]

Putin praised Medvedev as a man whose "main principles in life are the interests of its government and its citizens."

And pleasing his master.

He also announced a big pay rise of 14 percent for public sector workers, which will come into effect on February 1, just over a month before the election. The military will get 18 percent.

Of course, the pay increases have nothing to do with buying loyalty and votes for Putie's weak sister.

In a further sign of Putin's intention to keep a grip on power next year, Russian media reported that Putin could send the Kremlin chief of staff to run Medvedev's election campaign.

[....]

Read it all at Reuters

Too busy shilling for the Palis, the administration's 'Russian expert' was unavailable for comment.

Also at A Tangled Web


UPDATE: Although speculation about Putie's future began last June, Vladimir Paranoid's announcement about becoming prime minister after Medvedev's 'elected' in March, experts were surprised.

Experts, schmexperts.

Baltic Perspective On Putie

POLITICS OF PARANOIA
No one who has paid the slightest attention to events in Russia over the past several years was the least bit surprised by the results of the Dec. 2 election, which was determined well in advance. Previous elections, of course, were also manipulated and marred by abuse of state funds (let’s not forget Boris Yeltin’s shenanigans in 1996, or the violations witnessed in 2000 when Vladimir Putin was first elected), but this year the scope of fraud and use of methods in contradiction with the spirit of democracy clearly demonstrate that, at best, neither Putin nor any other Russian official has the right to use the word “democracy” in reference to the country’s system of governance. At worst, Russia’s electoral sham has shown that the mentality of Russia’s leadership is driven by a more sinister psychosis – paranoia.

Analysts agree unanimously that Putin and his party, United Russia, would have won the election had it conducted it freely and fairly, and without prior manipulation of the laws to make it more difficult for parties to participate and break the higher, 7 percent barrier. Russia has prospered under Putin. GDP is up almost 70 percent, wages and pensions are paid regularly, a middle class has formed, and Russian corporations are now buying Western businesses. Then why the heavy-handedness and gross abuse of power?

Here opinions diverge, but while there are undoubtedly several reasons, the dominant one harks back three years to Ukraine, when foreign money and influence played a key role in helping reverse what appeared to be an electoral victory by pro-Russian forces. That one event – the so-called Orange Revolution – forever changed the Kremlin’s opinion of the West. Ever since then Putin and his administration have planned methodically, leaving no (spy)stone unturned, to prevent foreigners and NGOs from meddling in the parliamentary election.

The Kremlin’s fear of outside interference, in fact, has been irrational to the point of becoming paranoid. Two examples come to mind. First, cells of pro-Kremlin youth activists were positioned at various locations in Moscow on election day in order to prevent any impromptu anti-Putin rallies from materializing. There was even one outside the BBC’s office in Moscow to discourage opposition politicians from venting on the international airwaves. Second, in a major pre-election speech on Nov. 22 Putin referred to opposition politicians as “jackals,” which in Russian is an extremely strong word. “Now they’re going to take to the streets,” he ranted. “They’ve learned from Western experts and have received some training in neighboring republics.” Hence, the youth scare-squads on Dec. 2.

Putin is woefully intolerant. He has shown that he is not only unwilling to accept criticism of Russia but that he considers Russia’s internal critics to be traitors (This frame of mind – those who aren’t with us are traitors – is a devious twist to another familiar strain of intolerance first uttered six years ago by someone else: “those who aren’t with us are against us.”). His derogatory eulogy for Anna Politkovskaya, a renowned journalist and Putin-critic who was shot to death outside her Moscow home, is a self-indictment. Politkovskaya, he said, did more damage to Russia by dying that she did while alive. Clearly such words could only come from a demented mind.

For the Baltics, none of this is news. It should, however, be a useful confirmation of what is already known. We should be mindful of the fact that the Kremlin is now fueled on paranoia and will in the future be increasingly pro-active in meddling in affairs of countries in the near abroad now that it is utterly convinced that Western powers do the same. The Kremlin has recently scored important victories in Ukraine and Georgia, facilitating major setbacks in the democratic transformations of those countries, and when possible it will try to influence events in the Baltics as well. The Bronze Soldier riots in Tallinn were just the first instance of what is likely to become a regular phenomenon.

The State Department's Russian expert was unavailable for comment.

Via The Baltic Times