http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/04/27/dl2701 .xml
Putin's final farewell - or was it au revoir? Last Updated: 12:01am BST 27/04/2007 >From his supposed final state of the nation speech as president, it is difficult not to conclude that Vladimir Putin is seeking to extend his hold on power beyond 2008. Addressing both houses of parliament yesterday, he painted a picture of the threats facing Russia that was wholly illusory. First, there was the proposed American deployment of 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar installation in the Czech Republic as part of a missile defence system against states such as Iran. Second, there was foreign support for domestic opposition groups such as The Other Russia, whose most prominent member is the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Neither the proposed missile deployment nor the dissident coalition poses the remotest threat to a government that is estimated to command about 5,600 operational nuclear warheads and whose president enjoys nearly 80 per cent support in the opinion polls. Yet Mr Putin used the first yesterday to endorse a moratorium on Russian compliance with the terms of the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which the Western signatories have yet to ratify because Moscow has not withdrawn its troops from Georgia and Moldova. Condoleezza Rice, the American Secretary of State, rightly dismissed as "purely ludicrous" the notion that the Polish and Czech installations posed a threat to Russia. The same qualification might be applied to the demonstrations staged earlier this month by The Other Russia in Moscow and St Petersburg, which were violently dispersed by police. Hostility to the West is now the moving force behind the Kremlin's foreign policy. In Kosovo, it is resisting that province's inevitable independence by a completely unrealistic proposal that Pristina and Belgrade should talk. Over Iran, it is playing an ambivalent game with a revolutionary Islamic regime bent on acquiring nuclear weapons. The supposed sympathy for the Orthodox Serbs is spurious and the indulging of Teheran is folly for a country that faces a significant Muslim threat in the Caucasus. In the evening of Mr Putin's second term, Russia is harking back to the Cold War in its wish to be considered a superpower, which it is not; in its predictable hostility to the West; and in its paranoid intolerance of domestic opposition. The president said yesterday that it was premature for him to "come out with last political wills and testaments". Will he change the constitution to allow a third term, or to become a prime minister with the executive powers currently held by the president? Or will he simply wield supreme authority from behind the scenes, as did Deng Xiaoping in China? The chauvinistic tone of his speech can only encourage such speculation.
