Analysts: Putin Has Squandered Influence

[Tab]

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin has dented his prestige and squandered influence by backing the wrong side in political clashes in Ukraine and in the breakaway Georgian province of Abkhazia, analysts say.
...
"Putin should understand this isn't the Soviet Union," said Vafa Guluzade, a former government foreign policy adviser in Azerbaijan. "The time for appointing Russian marionettes is over."

Factors in Putin's gaffes appear to be Soviet-era habits of thinking, forged during his earlier career as a KGB intelligence officer, as well as reliance on a narrow Kremlin circle of advisers, analysts said.

In the case of Ukraine, he made the miscalculation that President Bush, who has forged a working relationship with Putin in the war on terrorism, would not get in his way, said Dmitry Trenin, an expert on U.S.-Russian relations at the Moscow Carnegie Center.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041207/ap_on_re_eu/russia_putin_s_miscue

[StClone]

1. Maybe

But I think he is being countered by BushCo over YUKOS, the Euro and the Iraq Occupation via clandestine and outright confrontation in Putin's backyard.

[Just Me]

2. Seems to me all the cold warriors are squandering influence.

Maybe they miss the good ole' days.

[bemildred]

3. Blather. Largely unattributed blather. nt

[NNN0LHI]

4. I predict Vlad will catch a cold this winter...

...and that it becomes fatal by spring time.

Don

[bin.dare]

5. do not trust Vafa Guluzade, he is a US stooge

a simple google on his name will gives lots of examples. an example:

"Still in 1999 Defense and Foreign Affairs magazine wrote that radical Islamists were trying to expand their network in Azerbaijan with the aim to quicken mujahedins dispatch to Chechnya, as well as organize sabotage actions against Russia, Armenia and Nagorno Karabagh. The magazine noted that many shehids (suicide terrorists) trained in Usama bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan were in Azerbaijan. In 1999 when Vahabits invaded Daghestan, the then foreign affairs advisor to Heydar Aliyev Vafa Guluzade described the battles in Chechnya and Daghestan as national-liberation movement, but not terrorism.

In 1996 Moscow-based Obschaya Gazeta published facts proving the transportation of weapons and ammunition from Azerbaijan to Chechnya. “At Kala airport, not far from the capital Baku planes from Pakistan and Turkey were landing every day with “Muslim aid” on board for brothers in Chechnya. The airport staff, thinking it all was for Karabagh, were surprised saying there was a truce there. The daily particularly, noted that Chechnya and Azerbaijan became transit routes for narcotic dealers."

http://www.nkr.am/eng/news/analitics.html

[Sara Beverley]

6. And what has Bush "squandered?" World peace and security.

The biggest squanderers in history hold positions of power in this administration.