Word: medvedev
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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NUCLEAR WEAPONS Back to the Future When they met in London in April, Obama and Medvedev voiced an eagerness to conclude a new nuclear-weapons treaty before the end of the year, and the expiration of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which restricts the number of nuclear weapons both countries can deploy. This is an area where the two countries have a long record of negotiations: the two phases of START - the first ratified in 1991, just before the Soviet Union collapsed, and the second signed in 1993 - led to an 80% reduction in the worldwide number of strategic...
Recently, however, Medvedev and his Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, have said nuclear-weapons reductions are possible only if the U.S. drops its plans to expand its missile-defense shield into Eastern Europe. The U.S. argues that such defenses, including installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, are necessary to protect the West from a possible missile strike by Iran. The Russians don't buy that. The shield, it thinks, is designed to give the U.S. an edge against Russia. "We don't believe that any plans for [missile defense] have anything to do with the 'Iranian threat,'" Sergei Ryabkov, Russia...
...measure of Russia's two rulers. Bush famously looked into Putin's soul during their first meeting, in Slovenia in 2001, and "found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy," a judgment that quickly looked hopelessly naive. Obama will want to gauge the true nature of the Putin-Medvedev duopoly. See pictures of Putin...
Many Kremlinologists in Washington say the meeting with Obama may be Medvedev's moment. The Russian President has long been seen as a cipher for Putin, his predecessor and patron. But some analysts think that the U.S. President's prestige may rub off on his Russian counterpart. There is a chance that Medvedev, 43, might stand for something new. He is the first of Russia's modern leaders never to have served as an official in the Soviet Union and has been showing some signs of independence from his former boss. "He's trying to carve out a space...
Some Russians opposed to Putin believe a pointed display of respect by Obama could boost Medvedev. That, they say, would make it easier for the Russian President to distance himself from Putin's ironfisted policies. It may, of course, be wishful thinking to believe that Medvedev can ever really be his own man, much less that he can put aside the suspicion of decades and forge a real partnership with the U.S. But it's worth a try. For this truth hasn't changed since the end of the Cold War: when Russia and the U.S. don't get along...