Atlantic Council

According to RFE/RL, the U.S. dropped plans to push for Georgian and Ukrainian NATO membership at an alliance meeting scheduled in December:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on November 26 pulled back from offering Georgia and Ukraine a formal roadmap to join NATO and said Britain had proposed finding other ways to bring them into the alliance.

Speaking from Havana after a meeting with Cuban leader Raul Castro, Medvedev welcomed the move, saying:

"I am satisfied common sense prevailed.  Whatever the reasons, European pressure or whatever else, the main thing is that they [Washington] no longer push ahead with their previous ferociousness and senselessness."

Germany will be either a world power or it will not be at all. - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925. Russia can either be big and strong or it will cease to exist. - Dmitry Medvedev, speech to senior military officers, The Kremlin, September 30, 2008.

President George W. Bush held his last meeting as a sitting president with his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev.

The meeting, at a summit of Asia Pacific leaders in Peru, came against a backdrop of chilly U.S.-Russian relations following Moscow's war with Georgia in August and Washington's agreement to base a missile defence system in Eastern Europe.

"It's an interesting moment because I've had a lot of meetings with Dmitry and Vladimir Putin," said Bush, who once famously told reporters he had gotten a sense of Putin's soul. "This will be my last meeting as the sitting president with the leader of Russia." "We've had our agreements. We have had our disagreements. I've tried to work hard to make it a cordial relationship so when we need to work together we can, and when we disagree we're able to do so in a way that is respectful to our two nations," he said.

Medvedev, who shook hands with the U.S. president in a flag-draped hallway of the waterfront Marriott hotel, agreed the two sides had kept lines of communication open. "Generally, despite the existence of points in which we strongly differ, we have worked well and will continue this work," the Russian leader said.

One presumes that President-to-be Barack Obama, who campaigned on a policy of unconditional meetings with any foreign leader, will continue the dialog.

Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, speaking at the Atlantic Council today, declared that Russia's justification for invading Georgia, that it was defending its friends abroad, is one that has been used by Russian autocrats for centuries to justify a doctrine of imperialism.

On Tuesday, Medvedev stated that the Russian government is willing to continue using its reserves for various financial rescue measures, which have totaled around $200 billion to date.  Russia's stock markets have plummeted a massive 70 percent since May, and declining oil prices are expected to more than halve its current account surplus for next year to around $40 billion.  The WSJ notes:

President Dmitri Medvedev warned that the crisis gripping Russia's banks and capital markets has spread to the real economy and pledged to use the Kremlin's still-massive oil wealth to provide more state aid for stricken industries.

His comments, his frankest on the subject yet, came as the World Bank cut its growth forecast for Russia next year by more than half because of the country's acute dependence on oil prices.  The bank said it expects the ruble to keep softening as it tracks oil prices lower.

"It's not a question of if; it's a question of how it will happen," Zeljko Bogetic, the World Bank's chief economist in Russia, said of the ruble's decline.  Russian officials have ruled out a sharp devaluation, but have increasingly hinted that the currency could be allowed to weaken slowly.

So, do these developments vindicate Putin's insistence in September that Russia's economic woes were due not to the country's conflict with Georgia but rather the financial crisis alone?  Probably not: "The global financial crisis hit Russia later than it hit the West, gaining real momentum only when global oil prices crumbled."

That the price of oil had already begun to decline in mid-August from its record July levels could be said to work into Putin's favor.  (Russia invaded Georgia on August 8.)  However, a different figure seems to indicate the Georgia crisis did result in economic damage: "Central-bank statistics show $83 billion in net outflows in the past three months while October saw a record monthly outflow of $50 billion."

The massive decline in energy prices has hurt Russia's resource export-driven economy more than any other factor.  However, dropping oil prices did not stop the military action in Georgia from exacerbating Russia's market problems.  When Putin blamed the financial crisis, he disregarded the effects of the Georgia conflict.  This time around, the financial crisis really is to blame.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev told the Federal Assembly on November 5 that he will deploy SS-26 Iskander short-range semi-ballistic missiles in the heart of Central Europe.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev gave a speech in Washington welcoming Barack Obama's election victory, and suggesting that tensions plaguing Russia-U.S. relations can be overcome. Russian news agency RIA Novosti ran the story:

"We welcome the election of Barack Obama, and count on him to take steps to overcome the problems that have built up in Russian-American relations," Medvedev said. "I believe that currently, Russian-U.S. relations lack the trust that they need."

Medvedev's speech came in sharp contrast to his state of the nation address, a day after Obama's election victory, when the Russian leader pledged to deploy tactical missiles near Poland in response to U.S. missile shield plans.

Regardless of tensions over the missile shield, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright who chaired Medvedev's address to the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Russia's new position represented "a huge opportunity" in bilateral relations. She added:

"I don't think Russia and the United States have ever had two such young and impressive presidents who will be able to communicate in a new generational way, and I as the old lady here would like to wish you all the best of luck."

The fact is this is just a lot of talk. Relations between the U.S. and Russia will not alter fundamentally because there is a new American president. If Medvedev is counting on Obama to drastically alter relations then he should think again: Obama will continue to pursue a foreign policy that is expedient to the U.S. And one shouldn't take this kind of warm dialogue too seriously. Remember how George W. Bush first spoke of Vladimir Putin when they were both new presidents? Not exactly best friends now.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, meeting yesterday with French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy, seemed to back off his threat to deploy missiles along the border with Poland and Lithuania, albeit with a string attached.  NYT:

On Friday, the Russian leader argued instead that all countries “should refrain from unilateral steps” before discussions on European security next summer.

Mr. Sarkozy, who presided over the meeting between Russia and the 27 European Union nations in his capacity as the union’s president, helped ease the way for Mr. Medvedev’s retreat. The French leader supported the idea of talks on a new security architecture for Europe and suggested that they could be held by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in June or July.

UPI's report makes clear that reciprocation is expected:

At a joint news conference with Medvedev, Sarkozy criticized U.S. plans to install components of a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, The Guardian reported. "Deployment of a missile defense system would bring nothing to security in Europe," he said. "It would complicate things."

Russia has threatened to install missiles in Kaliningrad if the United States moves forward with its plans. The big unknown is whether President-elect Barack Obama would follow up on President George W. Bush's missile defense plan.

Obama has made his willingness to hold talks with foreign leaders without preconditions a central tenet of his international relations platform, so one suspects he'll take up the offer to negotiate.

The Kremlin's latest move to deploy missiles in Kaliningrad is the first time since the Cold War that Russia has "declared its intention to create a military threat to the West." Yet the nature of the threat does not represent a fundamental challenge to U.S. or European security and has been largely overblown on both sides.

After first mentioning the idea in his state-of-the-nation address on November 5, Dmitri Medvedev asked Russian lawmakers to pass a constitutional amendment that will extend the presidential term from four years to six years, the Globe and Mail said Tuesday.  The change would not affect his current term, which ends in 2012.

According to Reuters, Medvedev stated the change was necessary to give the president additional time to enact reforms.  However, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti ran a story last week claiming that the draft legislation was actually created in 2007 while Vladimir Putin was still president.

Speculation remains high that Medvedev will resign after the legislation is passed, forcing a new election that Putin would win easily.  Russia's constitution limits a president to two consecutive terms, but there is no limit on total terms.  Watch for any effects the legislation may have on the recently restarted EU-Russia economic partnership talks...