Russia's External Relations

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The newly elected Chechen parliament held its first session on Monday, December 12, and the big surprise was the unscheduled appearance of Russian President Vladimir Putin (Vremya novostei; Kommersant, December 13). His seventh visit to Chechnya lasted only about an hour, including time to change into a formal suit, and it was far heavier on symbolism than substance. Yet the decision to go to Grozny shows that Putin understands that this challenge to his presidency has not disappeared. His speech was not polished prose from speechwriters, but a rather tortured 25-minute improvisation by a man who has few talents in this regard. The text (as published at the official website president.kremlin.ru ) betrays an urge to talk "normalization" into existence and even mentions "compromises," a rare word in Putin's lexicon.

PUTIN PROTECTS ISLAM AND PRAISES DEMOCRACY IN GROZNY - The James

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=31216
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/15/from_russia_with_blood?page=full Iraqi men march in a parade in Tikrit, Iraq, Saddam Hussein's hometown, on Feb. 8, 2003. The Avtomat Kalashnikova , C.J. Chivers writes in The Gun , is "the world's most widely recognized weapon, one of the world's most recognizable objects." The AK-47 and its descendants have defined and exacerbated half a century of guerrilla conflict, terrorism, and crime; it is the most abundant firearm in the world, with as many as 100 million Kalashnikovs in circulation, 10 times more than any other rifle.

From Russia With Blood - Interview with C.J. Chivers by Charles Homans | Foreign Policy

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/05/14/mixed_signals_from_medvedev

Mixed signals from Medvedev | FP Passport

It's ben an interesting week for Russian foreign policy watchers. First, a leaked paper out of Russia's foreign ministry, called for the country to seek better relations with the U.S. and European Union in order to spur foreign investment: The text is simply a response to President Dmitry Medvedev 's call to make foreign policy a driving force for foreign investment, a senior Foreign Ministry official told The Moscow Times, requesting anonymity because the document has not been officially released.[...] Russia needs to forge "modernizing alliances" with its Western European partners and the EU as a whole to attract foreign capital, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote in the introduction to the 13,000-word paper, posted on Russian Newsweek's web site. "The program's spirit is a foreign policy with neither friends nor enemies but only interests," the magazine said .
Arctic in Russia's Foreign Policy