Translated material
Heroes of Bucharest
Putin promised to “encourage” the press for their interest in Russia
There are no losers, but there are no winners either. There is only one offended and two excellent students. These are the results of the NATO summit that ended at the end of last week in Bucharest , as well as meetings of the Russia-NATO Council (NRC) and the Ukraine-NATO Commission. The main “actors” of these events, in addition to, of course, Ukraine and Russia, were Georgia, Croatia, Albania and Macedonia. It was the latter that was offended: this former republic of Yugoslavia will have to wait to be admitted to NATO until it changes its name so that it differs from the name of one of the provinces of Greece. Thus, a seemingly insignificant formal occasion demonstrated the triumph of NATO’s obligatory principle of consensus when making decisions: Greece was against it. But Croatia and Albania quite expectedly received their prize - an alliance membership card.However, the NATO summit’s postponement of the decision to provide a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia and Ukraine in the alliance did not become a sensation. As expected, in particular, by the newspaper Vremya Novostei, a compromise decision was made. In Bucharest, consideration of this issue was postponed to a session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of NATO member countries, which will be held in December this year.
It would seem that such a decision should satisfy Moscow and at the same time become a “flick on the nose” for Kyiv and Tbilisi. But the “devil is in the details” in the wording of this decision turned it into a demarche, which irritated the Russian leadership. This became obvious from Vladimir Putin’s unexpected appearance to the press gathered at the Bucharest summit. His communication with journalists turned out to be perhaps the most notable event of the three-day events in the Romanian capital. Both in terms of vocabulary - in just over half an hour, Putin twice called what the West is trying to impose on Russia "nonsense" - and in terms of very expressive gestures.
They didn’t so much expect Putin’s appearance as they guessed that it was he, and not the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Sergei Lavrov, who was promised to journalists, who would tell what Moscow expected from its NATO partners. The main hall of the monstrous palace, built in the final years of Romanian communist dictator Ceausescu's reign, where the summit was held was packed. The intrigue was fueled by the fact that the start of the press conference had already been delayed by almost an hour. Journalists knew about Putin’s “trademark” tardiness. But when the entire leadership of the Russian president’s press service appeared on the stage, it became clear that only Putin was expected. He walked onto the podium with a casual but confident gait, without removing his left hand, the one that was visible to the audience, from his trouser pocket. This is how President Bush usually likes to appear before the press on the White House lawn.
By this point, most of the press already knew what happened at the summit. The United States, with the active support of Poland and the Baltic countries, managed to insist on a fundamental change in the wording of the final declaration in the part that concerns the prospects for Georgia and Ukraine joining the alliance. Instead of the originally intended phrases welcoming the significant successes that Kyiv and Tbilisi have achieved on the path to joining the alliance, which one day will make them members of NATO, expressions of what is called direct action were used - Georgia and Ukraine “will become members NATO". It makes sense to quote this passage in full: “Today we have come to the decision that these countries will become members of NATO. Both nations made significant contributions to the alliance. We welcome democratic reforms in Ukraine and Georgia. The MAP is the next step for Ukraine and Georgia on their path to NATO membership. Today we have made it clear that we support these countries in submitting an application to participate in the MAP. That is why we are entering a period of intensive interaction with both countries at a high political level.”
It is unlikely that Moscow would like to see such definitions, because they only mean a temporary delay in the decision on the further expansion of NATO to the east that was actually already made in Bucharest. The Kremlin obviously hoped for a categorically negative position from Germany and France, who believed that post-Soviet candidates were not yet ripe for admission to NATO due to unresolved internal political problems, lack of national consensus on this issue (Ukraine) and unresolved territorial conflicts (Georgia) . However, Euro-Atlantic solidarity did its job, and the decision, which was not expected based on the results of the discussion at the meeting of the heads of 26 states of the alliance, turned out to be spelled out in the text of the final declaration after German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy left Bucharest. It was this detail of the behind-the-scenes NATO drama that caused particular indignation in the circles of the Russian delegation. “A good face for a bad game,” one of the Russian officials surrounded by Putin said irritably on the sidelines.
But since it is impossible to imagine that the NATO bureaucracy could afford to accept the document without agreement with Paris and Berlin, it remains to be assumed that the German chancellor and the French president therefore left the Romanian capital before their colleagues in order to avoid explanations with “friend Vladimir.” On the other hand, Frau Merkel and Monsieur Sarkozy themselves more than succeeded at the Bucharest summit. This was evidenced by their joint press conference, at which two extremely important decisions were announced. Firstly, next year France is returning to the NATO military organization, from which President de Gaulle removed it in the 60s of the last century. And secondly, the future NATO anniversary summit (in the year of the 60th anniversary of the alliance) will be held simultaneously in France and Germany - on the banks of the Rhine that separates them, in Strasbourg and Cologne. This will be a demonstration of the Franco-German alliance gaining strength and realizing its importance in Europe.
In addition, in Bucharest, the French president’s idea was consolidated that the return of Paris to the military structure of the alliance should be accompanied by the creation of an independent European defense system, which in turn would become an integral part of the NATO system.
“France occupies a full-fledged place in NATO,” Sarkozy explained in Bucharest, “NATO occupies more and more space in Europe. And I would like to emphasize that President Bush made a statement about the importance of European defense, and I perceive this statement as a turnaround that has historical significance."
Thus, almost all the main characters of Bucharest (Moscow, Tbilisi, Kyiv and Washington) “retained their face,” and some of them (Paris and Berlin) began to look even better than before.
Summing up the results of his participation in the work of the RNC, Putin called it “constructive” in spirit, noted that he was “frank” with his partners and they “responded to him in the same way.” The Russian president listed the undoubted successes of cooperation with NATO. Among them are an agreement on a simplified procedure for the transit of non-military cargo for the NATO contingent in Afghanistan, a joint anti-drug project based on the training center of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the implementation of an initiative for cooperation in the airspace, as well as a project on theater missile defense (theater missile defense). Putin mentioned cooperation in the field of anti-terrorism, including within the framework of the participation of warships of the Black Sea Fleet in Operation Active Endeavor, progress in work to increase the interoperability of the armed forces of Russia and NATO, in the field of civil emergency planning...
Thus, there seem to be many advantages in interaction with the alliance. But Putin moved on to the problems: the crises around the CFE Treaty and Kosovo, the American missile defense system in Europe (regarding which, by the way, in Bucharest it was announced that it was becoming the NATO system itself, and this did not please Moscow at all, despite what was done to it on behalf of NATO an offer to join it), the emergence of a “powerful military bloc” on the Russian borders, “threatening the security of our country”, “the alliance’s claims to a global role in the field of security, going beyond the zone of its geographical responsibility”...
The tone of Putin's “concerns” made one of the Romanian journalists worry: could a new “Cold War” begin? But the owner of the Kremlin calmed him down. “This is impossible, no one is interested in this,” he said, unless “individual dark forces that would like to muddy the waters and catch some fish in this troubled water”... However, the intriguing theme of “dark forces” further did not receive development. And in answer to the next question, why should Russia be afraid of NATO expansion, if as a result democratic countries are approaching its borders, the Russian president has already demonstrated his ability to operate with the concepts of formal logic.
“Think about how it sounds: if this or that country is a member of NATO, then it claims to be considered democratic, and if not, then it means undemocratic? - Putin exclaimed. - Let's see how many countries there are in the world to which no one denies the democratic character of their internal political system, but they are not members of NATO. Or are they already undemocratic? Or, for example, Ukraine: it turns out that if it had been accepted into NATO yesterday, it would have become a democracy. Isn’t it a democracy today? What nonsense?
...Leaving the hall, I ran into a familiar Ukrainian colleague who had been working in London for many years. He saw and heard Putin for the first time and was quite impressed by him. I was especially struck by his passage about democracy and Ukraine. Putin’s recognition of his homeland as a democratic country, especially against the backdrop of the Baltic states, pleased his colleague. But he found Putin’s address to journalists at the end of his last foreign press conference as president very mysterious: “The interest you showed in Russian issues deserves encouragement...” “What did he mean?” - the colleague was perplexed. The question hung in the air.