Experts Answered Your Questions on Russia's Politics

Cliff Kupchan?

CLIFF KUPCHAN: The president is the Commander-in-Chief. After that, pretty much everything is up for grabs. It can be changed, without changing the constitution, in that Mr. Putin could gain more power without passing a constitutional amendment.

So far, Mr. Yeltsin and Mr. Putin have reigned supreme. The presidency has been, by tradition and by constitution, by the way it was written, to be the sort of supreme office. Now, given Mr. Putin's really overwhelming popularity, in my view, in Russia, he could easily change that. He could run again in the year 2012, or he could even run sooner if Mr. Medvedev decides to step down.

So it's fluid, and in reality, it's not a legally-based relationship. It's something the two are going to work out together, how they work together, and who does what.

RAY SUAREZ: Have any previous prime ministers invested the office with much clout?

CLIFF KUPCHAN: The prime minister, in general, has been -- has served at pleasure and for as long as the president wants him to. It's really not been a terribly strong position. In fact, it's been more of a lightning rod -- if inflation goes wrong, if terrorism goes wrong, whatever -- the prime minister gets blamed.

Now, that's a risk Mr. Putin might take. He might not be able to change that, but I think he will. The short answer to the question is no. No prime minister has really had a lot of power.

RAY SUAREZ: Anna writes from Colorado: "Where did Medvedev come from? How long have he and Putin known each other?"

Sarah Mendelson?

SARAH MENDELSON: That's a very interesting question. Well, in one sense, Medvedev came from the Putin administration. I mean, I think it's very important when we are looking at the true tea leaves, and trying to figure out, "Where will Medvedev go? And what kind of a leader will he be?" He was a key part of an administration that, over the last eight years, has steadily shrunk public political space in Russia.

Now, before that, he is a longtime colleague -- mentee, if you will -- of Putin. He comes from -- he was born in a region of Leningrad called Kupchino, which I don't know if Cliff's family is from there, but the name certainly is the same.

RAY SUAREZ: Cliff Kupchan? Is your family from there?

CLIFF KUPCHAN: My family is from the Ukraine. The name is very close. I don't think we're from there.

RAY SUAREZ: Fred writes, from Garden Grove, Calif.: "Why is the U.S. government skeptical of everything that Putin does?"

Cliff, why don't you take that?

CLIFF KUPCHAN: Mr. Putin has a brass-knuckles reputation in this town, from using, at times, energy as a tool of foreign policy, which I think they're doing now with Ukraine. I think that's very clear. Cutting gas 50 percent for, I think, political goals. They've backed out of arms control treaties. They're developing new weapons. They're increasingly authoritarian. Corruption is widely regarded as unchecked. The Litvinenko affair, where a former security service officer was murdered in London, and the Russians have stonewalled that investigation.

He is a -- he's got a bad rap here. Now, in my own view, he's done some good, a bit of good, for the average Russian citizen. But that's a different story. In Washington, he has not got a good reputation.

RAY SUAREZ: But has -- Sarah Mendelson -- the United States treated Russia in a way that's gotten some of that reaction that Cliff just gave us a litany of?

SARAH MENDELSON: Well, yes and no. I mean, quite honestly, the Putin administration and Putin himself has run a very intense anti-American campaign, including sort of veiled references to the United States as similar to the Third Reich; in major foreign policies circles, saying that the United States is advancing a very dangerous foreign policy.

And, by and large, there's been a very muted response by the Bush administration. But I think there's actually more of a split, perhaps, in the U.S. than we've discussed. The business community has been quite keen on Vladimir Putin, and viewing a lot of what Putin has done as positive.

I would say that if you do look at the life of the average Russian, beyond the fact that there is more money in that person's pocketbook, which is obviously a good thing, major institutions -- like health, police, army, education -- have actually not been reformed, and things have gotten much worse under President Putin.

RAY SUAREZ: I guess I was really asking about the world that came out of the Yeltsin years, when a Russia that had been through years of some tumult began to be treated as a secondary power by the United States, and whether Putin, during his early years as president, was doing some of things he was doing just to push back against that notion that Russia had almost departed from a central place in the world's stage.

SARAH MENDELSON: Well, in some ways, Russia was punching way above its weight. I mean, the fact that Russia is in the G8 and hosted the G8 meeting in 2006, I think, is a policy decision that was made during the Yeltsin years to bring Russia closer to the Euro-Atlantic community, but it is increasingly puzzling to a lot of people.

The moment that you're speaking of, in a lot of ways, has to do with Kosovo in 1999, and I think the Russian elite feeling that the U.S. and NATO, in particular, made some decisions and then expanded NATO, of course, to include Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. And that very much enraged the Russian government. But, of course, these are independent states.

Sarah Mendelson alluded to Russia's use of energy as a political tool. Cliff Kupchan, any change on the horizon?

CLIFF KUPCHAN: I think that there is a consensus among the Russian elite right now around a large state role in economy, certainly the Gazprom and sort of policy. Medvedev, you know, I've only had one discussion with him of any substance, and he does seem different. He's younger. He's a different generation. He doesn't seem to have a vitriolic view that of the United States that Putin does.

But he's not going to be able to, even if he wants to, break that consensus about the role of Gazprom, and the role of Gazprom as an input into our foreign policy. I don't think there's going to be change for a good long time.

RAY SUAREZ: Sarah Mendelson, let's talk a little bit more about that generational difference. If Medvedev came to adulthood during a time when the Soviet Union was starting to really unravel, and lived through the years of chaos that followed, and now has come to power in this resurgent time, how is his worldview different from a Putin, who was really part of the apparatus and came to adulthood during, perhaps, the last chapter of the USSR's real power, as a global power?

SARAH MENDELSON: Well, I'll answer that question, relying on some survey data that I've gathered, along with colleagues. We did a survey in 2005 and 2007 of young Russians, and they're a little bit younger than Medvedev, but what's really striking is how -- well, you note the sort of tumult of the 1990s.

I think, psychologically, that had a very big impact on these young people. And Putin actually presents an image that is very satisfying to a lot of people. It's a kind of restoration and glorification of a lot of Soviet myths. There's a lot of Soviet nostalgia that both Putin encourages that the young people, I think, embrace.

And I suspect that, you know, there's no reason to think that Medvedev is, given the fact that he's been the mentee of Putin's, that much different from these young people. These are the Putin generation.

Rather than being the fall of the Berlin Wall generation, or, you know, sort of a generation that embraces international human rights norms and peace and justice, these are young people who think that Stalin did more good than bad and that agree overwhelmingly the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, something that Putin has advanced that idea.

RAY SUAREZ: Cliff Kupchan, now that the republics have gone their own way, and a lot of the other nationalities that made up the USSR are living in foreign countries, does Russian chauvinism come back into view in a way that was not possible when the USSR was trying to at least pay lip service to the idea of a multicultural, multiethnic state?

CLIFF KUPCHAN: Russian chauvinism -- Russian nationalism, I think I would put it, is a concern. The -- in my view, the Russians have not essentially come to terms with the independence of many countries, in particular, Ukraine and Georgia.

We see the Ukraine conflict breaking loose again as we speak. The relationship with Georgia -- well, I don't think the Russians will recognize the separatist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent. I do think that they will beef up relations with those two territories; i.e., undermine the sovereignty and independence of Georgia.

So these are going to be ongoing concerns, for the rest of the Bush administration and for the next U.S. administration, to insist that Russia does respect the territorial integrity of its neighbors.

RAY SUAREZ: And when it comes to those kind of conflicts, does $103-a-barrel oil make Russia a more self-confident character when trying to push some of these regional buttons?

CLIFF KUPCHAN: I mean, look, $103-a-barrel oil does a lot to any country, whether it's Russia, or whether it's Iran, or whether it's Chavez. Unfortunately, $103-a-barrel oil has empowered a lot of the bad guys, in our view.

So certainly, when I go to Moscow now, friends of mine, academics I've known for 25 years, tell me that there is more confidence among the Russian diplomatic and business elite than at any time since 1975. That is going to keep Russian foreign policy aggressive, on steroids, shall we say. It's going to be one very important factor.

But it's a factor on top of deeply-held beliefs about the Slavic community, about the region, and it's going to be something that's going play out slowly and in a very bumpy way. This is still a regional great power that is very difficult to boss around, especially in our backyard.

SARAH MENDELSON: Yes. Although, I think the U.S. also depends on a whole series of values that it shares with allies and partners around the world. And what I'm concerned about is that the Russian government, to a certain extent, along with China, are advancing a very sort of 19th century conception of the state.

They're really challenging the -- what we assumed was an attitude towards human rights and international law. They're advancing a kind of hyper-sovereign approach to the state. And while we need Russia for certain conflicts around the world, we also -- we want to make sure that Russia is both part of the Euro-Atlantic community, but is not challenging it in ways that makes the Euro-Atlantic community weaker.

And I think the concern has been over the last couple of years that that has happened.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, give us an example. Where are some of the tension points where the United States must have Russia as a partner in areas of common concern, and risks letting its own values down in order to indulge in --

SARAH MENDELSON: Sure.

RAY SUAREZ: -- in realpolitik?

SARAH MENDELSON: Well, I think there are two great examples. One is what we just saw on Sunday. This was not an election. It didn't conform with any international election standards. And yet, leaders around the world, including in the Bush administration, are in, in a sense, in a position where they call and they congratulate Medvedev.

And in some ways -- and they did that, also, in December, during the Parliamentary "elections" -- and I say that with quotation marks around the elections. That enabled Putin essentially to do what he did over the last couple of months, and it says to them that you can basically stage this kind of transition, and there's no real consequence.

A more probably, I think, a tragic example has to do with Darfur, and in the Security Council, and both Russia and China were involved in essentially delaying a robust international response to what was going on in Darfur.

CLIFF KUPCHAN: Ray, could I jump in briefly on that?

RAY SUAREZ: Sure, please.

CLIFF KUPCHAN: It seems to me that Iran is the key tradeoff, if we really want to see where the rubber hits the road on this issue. The Russians are at the center of the Iranian nuclear crisis.

I can't think -- I want to boil this down to what affects the average American -- of an issue that touches them more deeply than an Iran going nuclear. Russia has connections in Iran that we don't. Russia has influence. I mean, Putin just met with Ayatollah [Ali Khamenei], the supreme leader. No American could even get close to him.

We do need Russia to bail us out of some of the -- of some of our deepest conflicts. Now, that doesn't mean to cave on the democracy issue. Democracy does matter. Democracies don't go to war with each other. They're more predictable. We Americans, we support democracy.

I would like to add, though, that Russia is now 17 years old. Russia is a teenager. It comes out of a very authoritarian past. Serving in the Clinton administration, I can say that I think we all misjudged how quickly it was possible that Russia would evolve into a democracy.

Now, that doesn't mean that things look good. Russia's headed in the wrong direction. But it means: A, we need Russia on key issues, like Iran; and B, you know, I agree with Sarah that things are going well, but we've just got to show some patience here.

RAY SUAREZ: If you look at the timelines, Sarah Mendelson, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, was there a turning point where it could have been otherwise, where there was a missed opportunity or a misunderstanding of the pivotal nature of an event, that leads us to the Russia we have today instead of one that could have been different?

SARAH MENDELSON: Ray, how long do you have? There are many points -- I think three that immediately come to mind, and one sort of overarching one.

One point is '93, when actually Yeltsin used force against the White House, which I think was a time when not a lot of us recognized that this was an assault on a Democratic institution, the Parliament, but it also -- it lent -- it was a quality that the Clinton administration essentially ignored, and then, of course, Yeltsin followed up with a first war in Chechnya.

The second is the election of Yeltsin in '96, where in January of '96 he had, like, two to three percent popularity. And by June-July '96, he was president again, to great relief by the West. I think President Clinton would have worked on his campaign team, if he'd been allowed.

And then, I think the last moment, that sort of embrace of Yeltsin, despite the fact that he was so unpopular, began a pattern of very -- well, it continued a pattern of very personalized relationships with -- between the presidents. And it ignored the population.

And I think if there's one thing that I would like to see done differently, it's not only a new president in Russia -- but we're going to have obviously a new president in the United States -- I would like to see the next administration, whoever it is, reaching out and thinking much more about Russians beyond the Kremlin.

I want to hear and pay attention to the voices of Russians. Not just the leadership and I think there's been far too much of that.