MOSCOW, February 27 (RIA Novosti)
Washington criticizes Russia, but mildly / Putin gives European ministers social policy master-class / U.S. ready to quit plans to deploy missiles in Eastern Europe / Russia prepares for large-scale cyberwar
Kommersant, RBC Daily
Washington criticizes Russia, but mildly
The U.S. State Department has published its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The report on Russia enumerates nearly all events in the country last year, but does not blame it for the war with Georgia, choosing instead to divide responsibility between the two sides.
It is generally believed that Democratic administrations are more concerned with human rights than the Republican ones. The report, which has been amended under the guidance of Hillary Clinton, does not confirm this rule. It is a technical enumeration of last year's events in the human rights sphere rather than moralization.
The State Department's previous reports were often more emotional, and this year's report only repeats descriptions from the previous reports. For example, the phrase "a compliant State Duma" was first used in the 2004 report and has since become a fixture.
However, the general tone of this year's report shows that the Obama administration has assumed a wait-and-see stance, and does not want to offend its potential negotiating partners outright.
This has pleased Moscow.
"We have problems in this sphere, but we speak about them openly and publish annual reports on the situation," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
Former foreign minister Igor Ivanov said it would be unwise to demand that the United States abandon all its habits overnight. He has recommended putting this year's report aside and getting down to real problems in Russian-American relations.
Sergei Oznobishchev, deputy chairman of the Russia-U.S. Association, said the State Department would not be itself without such reports.
"Russia and the United States have common problems, such as Afghanistan and Iran, as well as nuclear proliferation, which are more important than differences," Oznobishchev said.
Gazeta.ru
Putin gives European ministers social policy master-class
"Our strategic goal is to raise domestic social standards to the best European and global levels," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said at the first Conference of European Ministers Responsible for Social Cohesion.
If he hadn't been speaking to a foreign audience, one could get the impression that an early federal election campaign has started off in Russia. In any case, the fading popularity of the country's top officials calls for some verbal stimulation at least, elections or no.
According to a recent survey by the Levada Center pollster, every fifth Russia (20%) is critical of Putin's service as prime minister. The number of those thinking the prime minister is doing the right things plummeted by as much as 5 percentage points in a month, to 78% from 83%.
The problem is that the talk of living "as well as in Europe" as a remote prospect no longer satisfies Russians, not when their living standards are declining with each day.
It is easy to announce plans to raise pensions to the minimum subsistence level in a speech to European officials, because they do not know what retired Russians know: the minimum subsistence level is only 100 euros. Moscow officials estimate it at 4,578 rubles - in one of the world's most expensive cities! Had they known, they might have envied the Russian government that could ensure social protection without any serious effort or investment because their people's needs are so few.
Yet, even these people are sometimes difficult to pacify. Many were angry in 2005 when retired citizens and people with disabilities had their privileges replaced by a monetary allowance.
The government had to make some major concessions and cash injections to restore their popularity then. But that was a sweet time of abundant oil and gas revenues. Today, amid an economic recession and raging inflation, even maintaining social spending at the planned level won't entirely prevent a decline in living standards.
The government is highly unlikely to eliminate poverty among retired people by the end of this year. It is possible that poverty will spread among the workforce as well.
Kommersant
U.S. ready to quit plans to deploy missiles in Eastern Europe
Following his visit to the United States, Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that Washington had not yet decided to deploy a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, but would deliver Patriot missiles to Poland anyway.
His statement was the first direct confirmation of the fact that the U.S. is ready to freeze the project. Patriot supplies to Poland do not worry Russia.
Factors pushing Washington to change its missile plans seem to be the global economic crisis and the need to increase spending to save the U.S. economy, as well as hopes of launching a dialogue with Russia.
Washington will not decide on missile defenses until presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev meet to discuss it, a source in the U.S. State Department told Kommersant yesterday. The presidents will make their acquaintance at a G20 summit in London in April.
At the same time, according to the source, the U.S. will not abandon its allies in Europe and try to guarantee their security.
Although Poland failed to persuade its main ally to hand over missiles freely, the agreement to deliver Patriots is seen in Warsaw as a victory. Polish politicians have repeatedly said that Poland needs Patriot systems to defend itself "against the threat from the East," which, they said, increased after the Russia-Georgia war.
Moscow, however, was left unconcerned by Washington's agreement to pass Patriot systems to Poland. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday that Russia does not mind Poland's military technical cooperation with other countries "if it fits with international norms." "On the other hand, we are really interested in plans to deploy the missile defense system's Third Site, because that affects our security," the minister said. "We are currently holding consultations on this issue with our American, Polish and Czech counterparts."
Izvestia
Russia prepares for large-scale cyberwar
In two or three years, Russia may be involved in a large-scale information war, with computers used to disrupt the work of the enemy's key military, industrial and administrative facilities, and to put media and psychological pressure on the people and troops, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of Russia's General Staff, told journalists.
Nogovitsyn said the Russian General Staff could create an early warning system to detect and identify malfunctions in information networks and flaws in software. The Defense Ministry plans to begin by drafting a comprehensive strategy of information defense.
"I don't think we should do this now," said Vitaly Kamlyuk, leading expert at the world's largest privately held anti-malware company, Kaspersky Lab. "Hacker attacks on Estonia and Georgia don't matter. [Hackers paralyzed the work of Estonia's state establishments in April 2007 after the removal of the Bronze Soldier monument from downtown Tallinn.] These were acts undertaken by individual groups, not a state. A real [cyber] war entails the use of huge resources, and yet its results will be unpredictable."
Kamlyuk admits that society has become dependent on computers and information networks. But every state, even though a part of the World Wide Web, is still an autonomous entity. Its disconnection from the outer world for any reason will not stop the information flow within the country, he said.
"This is a strange statement, because such issues are outside the competence of any one department and should be tackled by Russia's Security Council," said an officer of the Federal Security Service. "Besides, the military definitely know that we have created and keep improving information protection mechanisms."
Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has a new deputy for information and telecommunication technologies, Dmitry Chushkin, who is responsible for "enhancing the efficiency of the management system and for maintaining and developing its foundations."
Analysts say Nogovitsyn's statement could be interpreted as a report on the work of Chushkin's department.
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