Cheney speech angers Russians

MOSCOW – Russian media Friday described Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticism of Russia and President Vladimir Putin as the start of a new Cold War.

Cheney’s words Thursday at a conference in Lithuania drew a comparison to Winston Churchill’s famed “Iron Curtain” speech and reflected the deepening distrust between Washington and a newly assertive Kremlin.

In his speech, Cheney accused Russia of cracking down on religious and political rights and of using its energy reserves as “tools of intimidation or blackmail.”

Opponents of reform in Russia, the vice president said, “are seeking to reverse the gains of the last decade” after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet empire.

There was no public reaction from Putin or the government.

But the prominent business daily Kommersant said Cheney’s comments marked “the beginning of a second Cold War” and harked back to Churchill’s speech condemning Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe with the “Iron Curtain” label that defined the East-West divide for decades.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov refrained from criticizing Cheney but condemned the meeting in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, which brought together the pro-Western leaders of former Soviet republics on the Baltic and Black seas.

“Over the past years, many forums have been created that reflect the desire of the respective states … to pool their efforts to achieve common benefits,” Lavrov said. “But there are forums that create an impression … that they are convened … for the sake of uniting against someone.”

Cheney’s criticism came two months before President Bush is to join Putin in St. Petersburg for a summit of the Group of Eight major industrial powers.

“The speech effectively eliminates the vestiges of strategic partnership between Russia and the United States. And if U.S. President George W. Bush confirms the stance, the idea can be buried,” said pro-Kremlin political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky, the Interfax news agency reported.

Many Russian commentators said the venue for Cheney’s speech – Lithuania, a nation struggling to recover from a half-century of Soviet domination – made the blow even more painful for the Kremlin.

“By attending the forum, the United States has sent a message to Russia and those countries: We aren’t leaving, we consider the region part of our sphere of interests,” Liliya Shevtsova of the Carnegie Endowment’s Moscow office said in an interview.