There is not enough coverage in the media about exactly how authoratative Putin's administration has become. The current president of Ukraine is Putin's lap dog (kind of like Blair and Bush) and the president has gone as far as to suggest that the official Ukranian language be changed to Russian! Putin meanwhile is trying to rebuild strong support from the countries of the former USSR while slowly taking away civil liberties in Russia (ie: the Russian media is almost entirely Gvmt run, many strong opponents in the last election were made ineligible by loopsholes in laws so that the opposing parties could not gain support for a candidate). Bush sits back, he does not want to anger Putin (a supporter of his) but at the same time he should denounce Russia for their regression, as it is against his "liberty and democracy for all peoples" policy. No progress is being made in Chechnya and the other caucasses: the people there are still severly opressed and terrorism continues. Putin is not what Russia needs right now.

I realize my ramble has been full of generalizations and lacks details, and I almost come off as a conspiracy theorist, but Putin is really starting to scare me.

Putin does scare me a bit. But I'm not sure if there's any simple answer.

I agree, what I would like to see is fair elections (UN supervised perhaps?) with a strong second candidate. I realize there is no chance a country like Russia would allow the UN to intervene in it's elections but some sort of election which is clearly fair would be nice.

That's fuck up man. I was reading some thing the other day about Russia being very paranoid that tons of countries are "anti-Russian" Finland and Denmark being two of them if I recall.

I dug up a bit of background on President Putin. Keep in mind this was dated from about 2002:
----------------------------------------------------

BBC World News:

By BBC News Online's Stephen Mulvey

Vladimir Putin is President Boris Yeltsin's chosen successor, and the Russian parliamentary election showed he was the people's favourite too.


Until his appointment in August, he was a little known figure who had spent most of his career working for the Soviet security service, the KGB, including several years as a spy in Germany.

In a matter of weeks he had become the most popular politician in the country, and by the end of the year, the acting president.

Meteoric rise

Mr Putin's meteoric rise began in 1996 when he was invited to Moscow from St Petersburg to start work in the presidential administration, and became a member of the Yeltsin inner circle, known as the "family".

By March of the following year he had become deputy head of the presidential administration, and in July 1998 he was appointed to lead the Federal Security Service, one of the successors of the dismantled KGB.

Putin's rise
1994: deputy mayor of St Petersburg
1997: deputy head of presidential administration
1998: head of Federal Security Service
1999: secretary of Security Council (March); Prime Minister (August); Acting President (December)
Even in this important position he kept a low profile. Far from charismatic, he has an expressionless mask-like face, rarely smiles, and speaks softly.

For years he had a reputation as a "grey cardinal", a man who wields power quietly, behind the scenes.

But suddenly, in August, he was catapulted into the political spotlight, and the former eminence grise quickly came to be seen as a man of action.

In response to incursions by Chechen Islamic militants into neighbouring Dagestan, Mr Putin ordered the Russian army to expel them.

Little is known about Mr Putin's KGB career
Then, blaming the Chechens for a series of apartment-block bombings in Russian cities, he told the troops to continue into Chechnya, to root out and destroy the rebels.

In an end-of-year address at a Kremlin reception he said Russia had been duty-bound to restore national honour in Chechnya, where the Russian army was humiliated in the conflict of 1994-96.

"We shall not allow the national pride of Russians to be trod upon," he said. "We are sure of the power and prosperity of our country."

Liberal credentials

But despite his current image as a strong man, Mr Putin has been endorsed by some of Russia's best-known liberals and reformers.

His predecessor as premier, Sergey Stepashin, described the 47-year-old as a "decent and honest man".

After the collapse of communism in 1991 he worked with Mayor Anatoli Sobchak in Petersburg.

Mr Putin's popularity has soared during the military campaign in Chechnya
And when Mr Sobchak lost power in 1996 it was another reformer, Vice-Premier Anatoli Chubais, who recommended him for a job in the presidential administration.

In an essay posted on the internet at the end of December - seen by many as his manifesto for the presidency - Mr Putin said he favoured a market economy, but one that was adapted to Russian conditions.

"We can count on a worthy future only if we manage to naturally combine the principles of a market economy and democracy with Russia's realities," he wrote.

He said Russians still relied on a strong, paternalistic state: "There is no point speculating whether this tradition is good or bad. It exists and remains dominant for now. This should be taken into account, especially in social policy."

Russia, he said, was not yet ready for classical liberalism, and would not soon, if ever, come to resemble the USA or the UK.

He had words of criticism both for Soviet leaders, who he said failed to make the USSR a free or flourishing country, and for the post-Soviet reformers who he said had made avoidable mistakes.

However, like Mr Yeltsin before him, Mr Putin maintains close relations with many of these reformers.

In Russia's recent general election he won the public backing of the Union of Right-Wing Forces, headed by two young liberals, former prime minister Sergey Kiriyenko and former deputy prime minister, Boris Nemtsov.

This party's association with Mr Putin helped it to take fourth place, while the party Mr Putin himself voted for - the pro-Kremlin Unity bloc - came second. Mr Putin is the first Russian prime minister with such significant support in parliament.

Although he has now given a statement of his economic and social policies, his abilities in this field remain largely untested.

He has been fortunate that the soaring price of oil has alleviated Russia's perennial cash shortages during his first months in office.

His huge popularity with Russian voters still depends almost completely on military successes in Chechnya, and this is fraught with risk.

Though the Russian army has tried to stay out of reach of Chechen fighters, subjecting them instead to a remorseless air bombardment, there is a risk that Russian casualties will rise.

If they reach the levels seen in the last Chechen war between 1994 and 1996, Mr Putin, among others, would take the blame.

This is one reason why the early presidential election caused by Mr Yeltsin's sudden retirement is to Mr Putin's advantage. With the vote in March rather than June, he has a better chance of being elected president before the Chechen conflict goes sour.

I remember reading somewhere that Putin made a strongly worded public criticism of Shrub for defying world opinion, and thus democratic principles, in acting unilaterally outisde of the UN, and I chuckled. Sure the guy has a good point, but for him to criticise others for disrupting global affairs through unilateral action, in marginalising and silencing opposing voices?

*ring ring*
Kettle: Hello?
Pot: You're black.

It is an important point to make, that historically, the Russian people have been under autocratic and strong central rule. There is a quote from Putin himself, who has history of liberalism, to say pragmatically that Russia's sense of democracy and freedom will not for a long time (if ever) resemble that which exists in the US or the UK. The US was founded with a strong sense of individualism and freedom. This is not the case with Russia, and Putin knows it.

That being said, I am still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt right now. Should he change the constitution of Russia and allow himself to run for a third term, then I will join your suspicions. However, should he allow free elections to take place following the end of his second term, things may be different. Perhaps he is taking steps to increase the security of his nation, that without, democracy cannot exist (sound familiar). He knows it is a double-edged sword...security for democracy...but he believes that this is the most important consideration at this time. Perhaps if he can secure Russia, inspite of some sacrifices in the here and now, he can secure a more liberal democracy in Russia for the future. He was always known as a liberal, but the man also has plenty of experience in the KGB and Soviet Russia as well.

I'll hope that he is just being practical for the current times, which call for further security and unity in his nation, so that the future may deliver more democracy. I'll hope that this is just one backstep in a series of foward-moving baby steps towards Western Style democracy. I'll hope that the democratic revolution is still netting a forward gain inspite of this backpedal.

I'll hope for now.

I hope for the same things here too....I don't really have a choice.

To want failure would be terrible. To hope for success even though we disagree with the means is still a better way to go. If success does not occur in Russia, hopefully the people will get to vote for someone new and different.

I read an article recently which stated that Putin is Russia's most powerful leader since Stalin, and is not too keen on civil liberties.

I think there is plenty of potential for trouble, although we're not quite there yet.

And I don't think we can go that far with it quite yet. I think how the US is handling it thus far (with caution and patience) is probably the best way to go right now. Afterall, we have plenty of irons in the fire as it stands right now.

What about Putin getting overly involved in the Ukranian election? ANd the US not saying a damn word about the Ukranian election?

Colin Powell has gone on record criticizing the election in the Ukraine.
As for Putin himself, perhaps the US feels that it has done the very same thing before and feels as though this is not the time and place to address the issue. Perhaps a stronger stance should be made against Putin, but I do not think we are capable at this time, of risking a severing of ties with Russia.

I do not think it is a gamble that the administration is willing to take right now.

I agree that we are not speaking because we do not want to sever ties with russia, we do not want to anger them at all so the Bush administration refrains from commenting on some issues that would be making headlines here if they were occuring in the middle-east.

I understand, but I would also say to give it some time. If things go poorly on the December 26 elections, then we may want to push for a tougher stance.

I really want to write something long about this, but I don't have time. My favorite professor in college taught Russian history, so I took all of his courses.

I will say that Russia is no more ready for democracy given its history than the Arab world is, and that is why aren't going to get it anytime soon. The UK and US have 1000 years of history of authority coming up from the people to the government (or at least the philosophical basis is there for that long), but Russia has no history whatsoever of this idea. It has ALWAYS been God, King, People, and the Russian people have always looked up for their authority. You can't just give a dictated people authority over their own lives and expect it to work quickly. Look at France. It took them the better part of a century to put together anything that resembled a working democratic government. I don't know why anyone thinks that it can be any other way.

When Napoleon planted the seeds of democratic principles across Europe 200 years ago, the ground in Russia was frozen and they never took hold. They are beginning there in the 1990's what Germany began 190 years earlier, and we all know how quickly the Germans picked up democracy.

Oh, and good luck in Iraq too.

--PunkDavid (I think I'll go poison the opposition now, because that's how a civilized democracy works.)

Dec. 12, 2004 — A Ukrainian presidential candidate's chief of staff believes "Soviet Union … sort of KGB experts" were behind the plot to poison his candidate, the aide told ABC News' "Good Morning America" today.

Austrian doctors said Saturday that Viktor Yushchenko, who faces a Dec. 26 runoff in Ukraine against the Kremlin-backed candidate, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, was poisoned with dioxin as he campaigned for president.

When asked by ABC News' Bill Weir if the Russian government, and specifically President Vladimir Putin, had anything to do with the poisoning, Oleh Rybachuk said: "I am not very positive about government, but what I might say that was Soviet Union … sort of KGB experts are clearly involved in this plot."

Rybachuk did not directly implicate Prime Minister Yanukovych in the poisoning, which is believed to have happened at a dinner party in September, but said it was a much broader conspiracy.

"I wouldn't call this ordered by the prime minister," said Rybachuk. "Let's say it more broadly. It's the regime."

Advance Warning?

Rybachuk added that Yushchenko had been forewarned of the plot.

"I actually talked to [Yushchenko] in late July when getting messages from both Ukrainian and Russian ex-secret service agents saying there was a plot and poisoning is number one," he said.

Rybachuk said the agents told Yushchenko the goal would not be to kill him but to make him an "invalid" in order to knock him out of the campaign.

"We couldn't believe they would dare, but they did," said Rybachuk.

Yushchenko has called for an investigation into the poisoning plot, but said it should wait until after the election.

Ukraine's Supreme Court ruled that the initial election results declaring Yanukovych the winner were tainted by fraud.

Yushchenko will take a couple of days off before resuming the campaign, said Rybachuk.

"The worst is over," said Rybachuk. "He feels great … [but] he needs rest."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=322922

Report: Putin may return to Kremlin in 2009
Russia's president could resign to make way for former leader

MOSCOW - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev could resign from his post in 2009 to pave the way for Vladimir Putin to return to the Kremlin, Vedomosti newspaper reported on Thursday, citing an unidentified source close to the Kremlin.

Medvedev Wednesday proposed increasing the presidential term to six years from four years, a step the newspaper said was part of a plan drawn up by Vladislav Surkov, who serves as Medvedev's first deputy chief of staff.

Under the plan, Medvedev could implement changes to the constitution and unpopular social reforms "so that Putin could return to the Kremlin for a longer period," the newspaper said.

"Under this scenario Medvedev could resign early citing changes to the constitution and then presidential elections could take place in 2009," the newspaper said, citing the unidentified source close to the Kremlin.

The paper said Putin, who is currently prime minister, could then rule for two six year terms, so from 2009 to 2021. The paper cited Putin's spokesman as saying he saw no reason for Putin to return to power in 2009.

Investors, already jittery over the impact of the financial crisis on Russia's economic boom, are trying to work out who is really in charge of Russia, the biggest question for those seeking to ascertain political risk.

They are seeking any details on how the current set up — with Medvedev as president and Putin as prime minister — could change. During Medvedev's speech Wednesday the Russian stock market erased most of the gains it made earlier in the day.

This Medvedev guy looks scary. Makes me a little afraid to see him.

The puppet can only be scary as its master.

Its funny to think that he's just a place holder so Putin can easily take his job back in a couple of years. I believe they have a restriction on the number of consecutive terms but not the total number of terms.

Too bad Palin wasn't VP she's an expert on Russia and could keep them in line.