The view from Russia

In the wake of a new nuclear arms control treaty between their country and the US, many Russians are feeling an undertow of doubt.

Ordinary citizens here often express confusion and sometimes outright suspicion about American intentions toward Russia. Some members of the policy elite complain that the summit – and the sweeping agreements to be signed today – are little more than smoke-and-mirrors designed to conceal Russia's descent into strategic irrelevance.

"What partnership?" asks Andranik Migranyan, vice-chair of the Reforma Foundation, an independent Moscow-based think tank.

"Americans understand partnership as the complete subordination of Russia to American interests," he says. "The agreements to be signed at this summit are meaningless window dressing, designed to keep Russia in its orbit."

Opinion polls on Russian attitudes toward the US are mixed, but tend to show a population deeply divided and dubious about the prospects for the strategic partnership championed by the Kremlin.

One survey, conducted this month among 1,000 adults in the 10 largest Russian cities by the independent ROMIR agency, asked people what they thought of American designs toward Russia. Almost 29 percent answered that the US was a "friendly" power; 28 percent said the US is "neutral" in its attitude; and 40 percent described the US as having "hostile" intentions.

Vladimir Fayer, a young information technician says he doesn't expect anything worthwhile from the summit. "I wish Russia would stop following the West and speak more independently," he says. "All these years of following the American path has done no good at all."

Housewife Svetlana Lapichkina is more sanguine. "The summit won't change anything," she says, "but the mere fact that it's taking place gives hope that Russia and the US can find common language and stop interfering in each other's business."

Putin has been steering Russia Westward since Sept. 11, when he phoned Bush to offer full support in the war against terrorism. Since then, the Kremlin has turned the other cheek as US forces entrenched in several former Soviet Central Asian republics and the troubled Caucasus nation of Georgia. Putin barely winced when Bush unilaterally pulled the US out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Russia still regards as the keystone of strategic stability.

"Putin is far ahead of the Russian public and elite in his pro-Western policies," says Sergei Kolmakov, an expert with the independent Center for the Development of Parliamentarism in Moscow. "It is a traditional position for a Russian reformer to be in, but it's not a comfortable one."

Today the two presidents will seal a treaty to radically slash the offensive nuclear arsenals of both sides from the current levels of around 6,000 warheads each to about 2,000 each by the year 2012. While the deal is more far-reaching than even the wildest cold war-era hopes for disarmament, it is clouded by US insistence on storing its own decommissioned warheads rather than destroying them.

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