Dmitry Babich, observer of Golos Rossii. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
The current meeting of the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan takes place against the backdrop of the non-meeting between Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart, Barack Obama. Ahead of Putin’s departure to “the Caspian” summit, Obama informed Putin that he wouldn’t come to the scheduled Russian-American summit in Moscow in early September. I believe it is not a coincidence. Russia should look soberly at what its partners from the West and from the East want from it. Recent developments have made these desires clear.
Almost all experts both in the U.S. and Russia note that the story over Snowden is only a reason for Obama’s refusal to come to Moscow. Moreover, Snowden’s story is not Russia’s shame – disclosures by “the American Solzhenitsyn” throw a shadow on the U.S., first of all. And Putin did a big favor to Obama, because Putin released him from a trial over Snowden in the U.S., which would cause much more mockeries and indignity than the trial over Bradley Manning. In due time even Brezhnev preferred to send the author of The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, abroad, rather than to the prison which Solzhenitsyn described in details. Thus, Obama appears in the position of Brezhnev in 1974: to put behind bars a person who reported on crimes committed by other people – it looks ugly.
So, the story over Snowden and the other stupid story – as if repressions will draw up with homosexual athletes from the U.S. in Sochi – are only covers of Obama’s refusal to meet Putin. For the Russian elite the truth is rather bitter: since the early 1990s Russia undertook a lot of efforts to make the West like it and build good relations with it. Worsening of relations with the U.S.A is unavoidably leading to worsening of relations with the EU. Why can’t we cooperate with the West? What do the Americans want from Russia?
All developments of the recent years show that the Americans want a change of the Russian elite and improvement in rotary tendencies in Russia, a new threat of collapse of the Russian Federation. The Western messages are clear. The vice-president of the U.S. Joe Biden long before of the presidential campaign in Russia in 2011-2012 made it clear during a visit to Moscow: the U.S. didn’t want to see Putin again in the Kremlin. When it happened and Putin became President in May, every month American and European mass media organized mass information attacks against him. The statement by the State Secretary Clinton on “non-freedom” of the Russian elections, Magnitsky’s act, the scandal over cancelation of American adoptions in Russia, fears over the new law on NCO-foreign agents, now fears over homosexual athletes in Sochi… In all these cases the attack technology was the same: a certain topic is chosen, Putin is presented as “a successor of Stalin”, Russian liberal media exaggerates it. At the same time nobody of them read amendments to the laws or the laws thoroughly.
Is it accidental? Of course it is not, as well as the American mass media’s support of Alexei Navalny in the elections in Moscow. If Navalny is one whom the Americans want to see in Russian power, it is a threatening factor. The participant of “Russian March”, the supporter of the motto “Stop feeding the Caucasus!” – several years ago Navalny would be presented as “a Russian fascist” by the American media. But today Navalny is “the true leader of the Russian people” who opposes Putin who is called by The Wall Street Journal “President of Russian ethnic minorities.”
After the Chechen campaign the Western “friends” of Russia realized that no ethnic minority, even the most aggressive, can destroy Russia. It cannot because the state is too strong, ties between people are too tight. The conclusion is that Russia can be destroyed only Russian ethnic nationalists who don’t know history of their multinational country. Navalny is one such people; he matches the image of “new Yeltsin”. The process of destroying the USSR underwent according to the same scenario.
It means that in relations with the West Russia will have to take a break – till our partners in the U.S. and the EU will become reasonable. The anti-Russian vector of the Western policy is only a part of the general non-professional foreign policy which makes Washington and Brussels intrude to Iraq and help the Islamist rebellions in Syria. The policy leads to losses, disappointments, and defeats.
What should Russia do? Along with general improvement of contacts with the East, priority should be given to relations with the CIS members. And from this point of view, the summit of Putin and Azeri President Ilham Aliyev is an important event. I believe the peculiarity of failed wedding of Russia and the West is realized by Baku.
