THE LAST MESSAGE

Russian President Vladimir Putin made his annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly on 27 April. His speech, which drew great attention all over the world, was carefully "prepared" both by Russian and foreign analysts. What is interesting is that everyone heard in Putin's speech what they wanted to hear - criticism, promises, threats, instructions, wishes, etc.

"National projects" instead of "national ideas"

Long before the address, many of the media prepared to "catch" in the president's speech hints that he will go for a third term in office next year. However, Putin was quite straightforward. "My term in office expires next spring - 2008. And the next address to the Federal Assembly will be made by another head of state," the president stated quite clearly, which, however, did not clear him of all "suspicions". Many thought it quite strange that in his address, Putin spoke only about plans for the future and did not really try to summarize. Is such behaviour typical of a person who is preparing to resign in less than a year? There is a well-known joke on this subject on the Internet: "According to experts' predictions, after his departure from the presidential post, the current president of the Russian Federation will head a join venture called "Rossneftgasugolmetalrybaviaatomstroyselkhozvoyensbytexportimport". Setting jokes aside, we should say that Putin's address to the Federal Assembly was not full of farewell notes. The president planned, criticized and warned. The funniest and most unexpected "advice from Putin" was a hidden request for all Russians to stop endlessly searching for a national idea. The head of state also called this process, which has kept the greatest writers and philosophers of the country busy, "an old Russian joke". The key word in this statement is, of course, the word "joke" - because all of Putin's speech was full of a desire to push the country towards creative action. However, his call was criticized by people who think that Russia still does not have the power to make a decisive breakthrough. Someone even felt sorry for the head of state who has been talking "for several years" about "the need to develop maritime ports", while "the situation is not improving at all…" But especially copious comments were made on the president's report that "Russia has become one of the 10 largest economies in the world", "has taken first place in world oil extraction" and "has completely turned around the lengthy decline in production".

We do not doubt that Putin expected such a reaction, which is why during his speech, the president looked more than confident. Reading out an impressive list of tasks facing the Russian Federation, he placed emphasis on "the development of Russian science", specifically, on "the establishment of an effective system of research and innovation in the sphere of nanotechnology". According to Putin, this will help increase the quality of life in Russia in the future, ensure a high rate of economic growth and establish an effective system of national security. Thus, it is planned to set up a new sphere in Russia, which will unite a large number of industrial and scientific organizations. We have to say that, taking account of "the large scale and unique nature of the project on nanotechnology", the Russian president in fact suggested that "all CIS countries take part in it". Putin made another business proposal to his post-Soviet neighbours (we think, first of all, to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) regarding the establishment of an international consortium on the construction of the second channel of the Volga-Don canal. According to Moscow's idea, "this new transport artery will make it possible to radically improve navigation between the Caspian and Black Seas". "In essence, this will not only provide Caspian states with access to the Black and Mediterranean Seas, i.e. to the ocean, but will also change their geopolitical position and allow them to become naval powers. I have already had preliminary conversations with my colleagues from the republics around the Caspian. For Russia, this can become another major and economically beneficial infrastructure project," Putin said in his appeal.

As for the main presidential plans to develop Russia, many of them, as we know, are being implemented within the framework of so-called "national projects" which, under Putin, replaced those same mysterious "national ideas". Eighteen months after their launch, the Russian leader noted success and came up with several interesting ideas, at least one of which will create new political jokes. Specifically, in order to speed up construction work within the framework of the national project "Accessible and comfortable housing for Russian citizens", Putin, among other things, proposed using the assets of the company Yukos as well, in order to pay off its debts to the state.

No help from abroad!

Generally speaking, the Russian president vented all his fury on the "oligarchy in disgrace": "Millions of people linked their hopes to the changes that happened in the early 1990s, however, neither the government nor business justified these hopes. What is more, some representatives of these communities, ignoring the norms of law and morality, started enriching themselves to the detriment of most citizens, which was unprecedented in our history... I should be straightforward: not everyone likes the stable and progressive development of our country. There are also people who make skilful use of pseudo-democratic phraseology and want to return our country to the recent past. Some are doing this in order to continue plundering national wealth and robbing people and the state with impunity, and others to deprive our country of economic and political independence." In any case, apart from an indirect "answer to Berezovskiy", this statement by Putin contains another important aspect, which, nevertheless, is not immediately clear. The thing is that the president suddenly distanced himself from "those who use power to plunder national wealth", which is very important in Russia where the word "thief" has always been a synonym of the word "official" and where the word "government" is regarded as an antonym of the word "people". It is even more symbolic that Putin's words were pronounced several days after the death of Russia's first president Boris Yeltsin under whom "the bandits in authority" went rampant in Russia.

Among other important initiatives of the Russian president, we should note his intention to combat the spread of alcoholism in the country, to set up exchanges dealing in oil, gas and other goods in Russia, to correct the demographic situation, to revive agriculture, the aircraft industry and shipbuilding and to continue radical reforms in the army. It is notable that Putin had the courage to note that the US military budget "is almost 25 times higher than that of Russia". As for the security of the Russian Federation, it turned out that this process will be based on the radical re-equipment of the army, increasing the equipment of strategic nuclear reserves, new generation nuclear submarines, the Bulava and Topol-M missile complexes, as well as on a single system of order and supply of arms.

Meanwhile, for foreign observers, the most important aspect of Putin's address to the Federal Assembly was the part of the speech where the president spoke about Russia's foreign policy. In any case, the Russian head of state had earlier spoken on such a painful subject for Russia as "the influx of money from abroad which is then used for direct interference in the country's internal affairs". "If we look at what happened in the past, we will see that in the period of colonialism, there was talk about the civilizing role of the colonial powers. Now slogans of democratization are taken on board. But the purpose is the same - to gain unilateral advantage and personal benefit and to ensure one's own interests," Putin said this so clearly that you don't even have to clarify who he was talking about. The Russian leader spoke even more vaguely about fears regarding the crackdown on non-government organizations through which "foreign money" is thought to be flowing in. "In conditions of democracy, it is impossible to imagine a political process without non-government organizations and without considering their opinions and positions. I should point out that state support for public organizations is increasing as well," Putin explained, which some Russian media believe only fanned the flames of hysteria among blacklisted NGOs. The Kremlin boss was also unhappy about the World Trade Organization, advising it not to "become an instrument of haggling on issues that have nothing to do with its work".

Think, Europe, think!

However, the biggest outcry was caused by Putin's statement that the strengthening of the armed forces of the Russian Federation should be closely commensurate with the nature of potential threats and the international situation. Of course, there is nothing unusual in such a directive pronounced by the commander-in-chief of any country. However, then Putin said the following: "I would like to talk about the following issue. As you know, in 1990 member states of the Warsaw Treaty Organization and NATO signed the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty." In the Russian president's opinion, this document would make sense if the Warsaw Treaty continued to exist. Otherwise, it turns out that the Russian army "is restricted in stationing its general purpose armed forces on the territory of its own country". "In fact, we are the only country that has so-called "flank restrictions" in the south and in the north. Even when the situation in the Chechen Republic exacerbated, Russia continued to follow the terms of this treaty and coordinated its actions with its partners. And what did they do? What did our partners do? They did not even ratify the adapted treaty, referring to the Istanbul agreements that provide for the withdrawal of Russian units from Georgia and the Dniester region," Putin said.

One thing immediately catches the eye here - the Warsaw Treaty ceased to exist a long time ago, but Russia is only now concerned about its unfair provisions. The key to this riddle is that according to Putin, "unfair Western partners" are not only "using the current situation to deploy a system of military bases near Russian borders", but are also "planning to deploy missile defence elements in the Czech Republic and Poland". In this regard, Putin thought it expedient to impose a moratorium on the implementation by Russia of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which alarmed the West. "It is about time for our partners to make their own contribution to arms reduction not only in words, but also in deeds. They are only increasing them. It is time to make your own contribution to arms reduction, at least in Europe," the president explained, causing rapturous applause in the assembly hall. It is worth pointing out that NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer also expressed an assumption that Russia's moratorium on the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty is a response to the US decision to quit the missile defence treaty.

It is notable that Putin's address to the Federal Assembly underlined once again that on the issue of deploying US missile defence systems in Europe, Moscow is trying to exploit contradictions between Washington and EU capitals. For this reason, Putin stated that this problem "affects the interests of all European states, including those which are not members of NATO". In this regard, the Russian president also focused attention on the OSCE: "This issue deserves and I would even say, requires discussion at the OSCE within the framework of the military-political dimension of this organization. It is time to give the work of the OSCE real content and turn this organization to problems that really concern the peoples of Europe and not to seek "fleas" in the post-Soviet area". Thus, it is quite possible that Moscow will manage to play quite an interesting game on this "chess board". This is proved by a number of facts, including the statement by the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, that European countries should make their own decisions on the issue of deploying elements of the US missile defence system. Another intriguing point in this situation is the position of the US Congress, several committees and subcommittees of which have spoken out against the White House plan to deploy missile defence systems in EU countries. Indeed, if the United States is so concerned about Europe's security, why does it consult only the Czech Republic and Poland, not all member states of the North Atlantic Treaty? As for relations with Russia, the head of the House of Representatives subcommittee on terrorism and non-proliferation, Brad Sherman, was more eloquent than anyone else on this matter. He said that Washington "needs to cooperate with Russia on Iran", and the best way to get "least cooperation" from it is to deploy US missiles on the territory of Moscow's recent allies."

Rivals or allies?

And finally, we have to point out that among those who listened to Vladimir Putin's latest address to the Federal Assembly were the likely presidential candidates in 2008 - Dmitriy Medvedev and Sergey Ivanov. However, the irony is that together, supplementing each other with different features, they really look like a politician who might undertake all the tasks outlined in the address to the Federal Assembly. We used the word "politician" in the singular because together Dmitriy Medvedev and Sergey Ivanov really resemble one Putin. The whole intrigue now is which of them will manage to become a greater Putin in a year.