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Russia to be guided by actions, not leaked secrets - Russian FM (Update 1)

© RIA Novosti . Anton Denisov / Go to the mediabankRussian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov - Sputnik International
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Russia will base its policies on the concrete actions of its partners rather than the documents leaked on Sunday by the WikiLeaks whistleblowing website, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

Russia will base its policies on the concrete actions of its partners rather than the documents leaked on Sunday by the WikiLeaks whistleblowing website, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

"WikiLeaks is an amusing read, but in practical politics we are going to be guided by the concrete actions of our partners," Lavrov told journalists in New Delhi.

The Russian president's spokeswoman said the leaked documents did not even merit comment.

The site disclosed a secret cable sent by the U.S. embassy in Moscow that said Medvedev "plays Robin" to his strongman Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's "Batman."

Despite Putin's authoritarian image, there were also suggestions in the documents that the former KGB man was finding it tough to prevent his decisions getting bogged down in Russia's notorious bureaucracy.

The site also released a secret cable from a meeting in Paris in February between U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and then French Foreign Minister Herve Morin. In it Gates describes Russia in blunt terms: "Russian democracy has disappeared and the government is an oligarchy run by the security services."

"President Medvedev has a more pragmatic vision for Russia than Prime Minister Putin, but there has been little real change," Gates adds.

Putin's ties to his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi also came under scrutiny, with talk of "lavish gifts" and a "shadowy" Russian-speaking Italian go-between.

Other potentially damaging cables cite several Arab leaders calling on Washington to attack Iran in order to end the Islamic republic's nuclear program.

The main suspect in the leak of the documents, along with the previous logs, is jailed U.S. Private Bradley Manning, who had top-secret clearance as an intelligence analyst for the Army when he was stationed in Iraq.

Pentagon investigators believe Manning accessed a worldwide military classified Internet and e-mail system to download the documents.

Manning, 22, was charged in June with several violations of the U.S. Criminal Code for allegedly transferring classified data without authorization.

The WikiLeaks website does not have a central office or any paid staff and its operations are run only by a small dedicated team and some 800 volunteers.

Wikileaks' founder, Australian activist Julian Assange, has no home address but he often pops up in Sweden and Iceland, where Internet anonymity is protected by law. He is being hunted by Pentagon investigators and is suspected of releasing confidential U.S. State Department documents.

NEW DELHI, November 29 (RIA Novosti)

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