Russia Archive

Last week in Lake Seliger, Russia, 10,000 Russian youth gathered for a two-week summer camp that involved volleyball sessions, morning exercise, sailing, and in-depth ideological instruction on President Vladimir Putin’s policies. As Russia’s government relations with Europe and particularly Britain are entering a new hostile stage, a pro-Putin youth movement called Nashi is playing a uniquely visible role in the Kremlin’s campaign against its opponents. Nashi, or “our guys” in Russian, claims 100,000 members across Russia. The movement emerged in 2005 following the youth-led protests in Georgia and Ukraine in 2004, when the Russian government took a series of measures […]

President Bush’s meeting with Vladimir Putin last week found U.S.-Russian relations in a far different state than six years ago, when President Putin was the first leader to call the Oval Office and pledge his support following September 11. While there is yet no real basis for proclaiming a new Cold War, a long list of thorny issues includes sanctions against Iran, location of the proposed U.S. missile defense system, and the unresolved question of Kosovar independence. Perhaps the most important recent change U.S.-Russian relations, however, is Russia’s much greater reluctance to support the Bush administration’s Middle East and Europe […]

On June 7, at the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm, Putin surprised his fellow heads of state by offering to provide the United States with unprecedented access to real-time data from the Russian-leased Gabala radar station in Azerbaijan. In return, Putin proposed that Washington freeze its plans to deploy a ballistic missile defense (BMD) radar in the Czech Republic and BMD defensive interceptor missiles in Poland. Putin and other Russian officials argued that, by using the Gabala complex, the United States would be able to closely monitor missile tests in Iran and would have ample time to deploy BMD against an […]