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| Heart-to-Heart: Presidents Bush and Putin (at last month's G-8 summit) began a 24-hour visit at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport,
Maine, Sunday. Jim Young/Reuters/File |
Why Russia resents US tack
As Bush hosts Putin to repair fraying ties, a mood of misgiving rooted in the 1990s looms over the summit.
from the July 2, 2007 edition
Page 4 of 4
"The West never seemed to know what to do with Russia and ended up supporting whoever claimed he would follow the American model, which meant Yeltsin, liberals, and the oligarchs," says Popov. "Whatever aid they provided was a pittance," which wound up in the wrong hands, he says.
Woes seen as effect of West's action
Yet the West was perceived to be actively intervening in Russia during those years, with advice, loans, and political support for Yeltsin which, rightly or wrongly, left the impression that the country's multiple woes were created from outside.
"In the Russian establishment, there is a growing feeling today that any 'solutions' offered by the West are mainly wrong," says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading foreign policy journal. "This was not the case a decade ago, when the West's success seemed to argue that they knew how things should be done. Now that feeling is gone."
Russian experts say the Bush administration should drop its previous complacency and realize that a serious breakdown in relations with Moscow is looming, and that forums like the face-to-face meeting in Kennebunkport may be the last chance to head it off.
"Each of the problems between us is not so serious taken separately, but together they present a very dangerous picture indeed," says Klimov.
President Bush, he says, should try to "think like a Russian for five minutes, and try to see things as we see them" before he goes into that next meeting with Putin."
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