Putin's Cheney jab underscores G-8 tension
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Putin reserved his most acerbic words for Cheney, who angered the Kremlin with a May speech in the ex-Soviet republic of Lithuania in which he accused Russia of cracking down on religious and political rights and of using its energy reserves as "tools of intimidation or blackmail."
"I think the statements of this sort by your vice president are the same as an unsuccessful hunting shot. It's pretty much the same," Putin said in an interview with NBC, referring mischievously to the errant shot by Cheney that wounded a companion on a hunting trip.
In three interviews with Western TV networks posted on the Kremlin Web site Wednesday, days before the summit in St. Petersburg, Putin set out what sounded like ground rules for dealing with an increasingly assertive Russia, saying his nation is open for constructive criticism but will not be pushed around.
Because of its economic weakness following the Soviet collapse of 1991, other nations countries had strong levers of influence on Russia, Putin said an interview with France's TF-1 television.
"Today these levers have been lost, but some of our partners have retained the desire to influence our foreign and domestic policies," he said. "They must get rid of this desire as fast as possible and shift to the normal, equal relations of partners."
"It bothers me that ... this approach is based on a 20th-century foreign policy philosophy under which our partners always acted from the need to hold Russia back, seeing it as a political opponent at a minimum, or as an enemy," he said. "This is a rudiment of Cold War thinking."
Putin offered his standard arguments against Cheney's criticism, saying Moscow has always fulfilled its natural gas supply contracts with European countries. He contended that while it is impossible to build democracy swiftly after centuries of czarist and communist rule, Russian democracy compares favorably in some ways to that of the West.
"In your country ... the president is elected not directly ... but through a system of electors," he told NBC, referring to the Electoral College. "And in our country, in Russia, the president ... is elected by a direct secret vote of the entire population. Where is there more democracy in deciding the most important question about power?"