The Experience Looks Eastward
When the Experience caught me in the hall today and asked me to write intermittently on Russian politics and US-Russia bilateral relations for this august blog, I was, needless to say, willing to oblige. I hope that this and future postings help to shed some light on the always enigmatic and sometimes neglected relationship that we have with the Russians.

If you're getting excited at the prospect of the upcoming presidential election, you don't have to wait until November: in fact, you've only got 11 short days to work yourself into a partisan frenzy. The 2004 Russian presidential election will take place on 14 March and, if Putin's ca.80% approval rating is to be taken seriously (and it should be), the election is all but a foregone conclusion. Opposition to Putin is half-hearted at best, and all major political parties (with the exception of the Union of Right Forces) have declined to field even remotely viable candidates. Even the farcical crypto-fascist Vladimir Zhirinovskij, best known in this country for his sexual escapades with the Italian MP and porn-star La Ciccolina, has declined to run, and instead has thrown his support behind none other than his personal bodyguard, Oleg Malyshkin. There's even the very real danger that voter turnout will not hit the constitutionally-mandated 50% mark, without which the Central Electoral Commission cannot certify the results. In this connection, the more cynical Anglo-American Russia analysts have attributed the sacking of (the now former-) Prime Minister Mikhail Kas'janov to efforts by the Kremlin to create an artificial media-blitz, in the hope that voters will be galvanized to renew their confidence in the president. The Russian constitution stipulates that, in the event that the Prime Minister be recalled, the entire Cabinet leave with him, and some have opined that the potential for new ministerial blood will motivate enough of a political spectacle to get out the vote.

A less sexed-up appraisal of Putin's purge must admit that Russia wonks have been waiting for the other shoe to drop on Kas'janov for the better part of a year. The former Premier was the last member of the Yeltsin "Family" left in the upper echelons of government and was publicly outspoken in his criticism of Putin's recent crackdowns on the industrial oligarchy, and the arrest of the billionaire head of the oil giant YUKOS, Mikhail Khodorkovskij. According to the Russian daily Nezavisimaja Gazeta, a nasty tiff last week between Putin and Kas'janov was sparked when the Premier discovered, ex post facto, that he had not been notified of Gazprom's decision to cut supply of natural gas to Belarus, which may have been the catalyst Putin needed to give oligarch-friendly Misha the boot for good. Stay tuned.