Vladimir Putin decided not to run for another term as president of Russia paving the way for his protégé Dmitry Medvedev to succeed him.
This does not mean he is no more interested in the future of the Rossiyskaya Federatsiya (the Russian Federation) which rose, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of the Soviet Union. As two-term president, Putin transformed Russia beyond recognition. Now Russia is a confident, resurgent power. For the last eight years, GDP has steadily increased, rising by the highest percentage of 8.1 percent since the fall of the Soviet Union. Inflation has fallen to under 10 percent, and Russia’s trade balance has increased threefold in four years.
Russians would, undoubtedly, remember Putin as a strong leader who rescued them from the anarchy that surfaced in the wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and reasserted the Russian identity.
The outside challenges Putin had to counter were no less serious. The United States, which wanted a total surrender by Russia, applied varying degrees of pressures to guarantee that Moscow would never be back on its feet after the terrible decade of disintegration, rampant corruption and steady decline. The most threatening and humiliating of the US moves against Russia is a new European missile scheme that would include installation of US radars to spy on Russia.
Reminiscent of the old Soviet adventures, Putin sent Russian scientists to explore the polar region and put the Russian flag deep in the ocean in the disputed Arctic region. It was a calculated move to reassert Russian stakes over the enormous energy reserves in the normally inaccessible region. More than 100 Russian scientists and geologists had a mission to find evidence to reinforce the mountain ranges in the ocean bed was a geographical extension of Russian territory providing valid grounds for the Russian claim.
The Western protests at the Russian attempt to ignite a conflict on the North Pole region was quite understandable. According to US experts, the Arctic region sits on top of the 25 percent of the oil and gas reserves in the world besides reserves of diamonds, platinum, manganese, nickel, tin and lead.
In an apparent move to show the Western powers that he did not fear them, Putin launched a scheme of advanced long-range ballistic missiles. They included missiles that could be launched from sea, land and from the air.
Russia also decided to station permanent fleets in the Mediterranean and other major oceans around the globe. Putin is also not ready to accept unilateral US decisions in matters related to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Russia recently warned that NATO was playing with fire if it intended to go ahead with the plan to admit its neighbors Georgia and Ukraine to the US-dominated alliance.
The neoconservatives at White House believe that Putin was trying to revive the Cold War and thus play its historical role on world stage.
It is also not a secret that there are fundamental differences of opinion between Moscow and Washington on most sensitive international issues such as the independence of Kosovo and Iran’s nuclear projects besides the defense shield project in the Eastern Europe.
Russia also does not approve of the continued US presence in Iraq or the NATO presence in Afghanistan besides the American meddling in the Central Asian republics.
Their suspicion is not misplaced as Putin made it clear that he was determined to return Russia to its old glory, particularly after NATO backed the plan to install a US radar system in the Czech Republic to track ballistic missiles.
Though Putin has stepped down as president, it does not mean that he would not come back after four years.
In February 2007, Putin warned the US that some of its practices went beyond limits of toleration. Three months later in June he threatened to position the Russian missiles toward new European targets if the US went ahead with the Defense Shield project.
One thing is certain: Putin would not remain a mute spectator if the Western powers attempt to sideline Russians.
