IN THE PRESS

Wall Street Journal commentary on "Putin's KGB instincts"

"Global View: Putin's KGB Instincts Serve Russia Badly," commentary by George Melloan, The Wall Street Journal, New York, February 14:

"... In Soviet times when the empire was threatened the Russians sent tanks, as to Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the borders of Poland in 1981. Today they use other methods, such as cutting off gas supplies to Ukraine in the dead of winter and - so Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili believes - arranging the sabotage of energy infrastructure serving his tiny state. Russia, of course, denies any political pressure, saying that it is only trying to obtain 'market' prices for the natural gas its Gazprom monopoly supplies.

"Yet it's hard to live down a KGB past. Reports are circulating in the Baltic states of secret Russian support for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and newspapers that back pro-Russian political candidates there. Mr. Putin has grown increasingly sarcastic in his references to the independent states that were once Soviet republics, reflecting a reluctance by Russian hard-liners to admit that the former empire is no more. ..."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 5, 2006, No. 10, Vol. LXXIV

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