U.S. Warns Russia to Act More Like A Democracy

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley met with Putin's national security adviser, Igor Ivanov, at the White House yesterday.

Another option under consideration at the White House is to have Bush visit Ukraine before the G-8 summit to demonstrate his solidarity with former Soviet republics that feel pressured by Russia.

"There's concern in Washington that if they go to that sort of meeting the risk is they'll be seen as validating Putin," said Steven Pifer, who was deputy assistant secretary of state in Bush's first term and is now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "On the other hand, they have to balance that against how much you want to put your thumb in your host's eye."

The Kremlin has come to realize that it has an image problem in the West, and this week, for the first time, it hired a Western public relations firm, Ketchum. "They were looking for help to improve lines of communication with the world media," said Ketchum Senior Vice President Noam Gelfond.

The Russian government also agreed to include on its official list of summit-related activities a June 29 forum in Moscow on national security and human rights. Among the participants are the New Eurasia Foundation and financier George Soros's Open Society Institute, which is viewed with enormous suspicion by Russia for its role in training democracy activists who toppled governments in Ukraine and Georgia.

But Putin and his aides bristle when they feel they are being lectured, and it remains unclear whether they are willing to make any substantive changes. After Cheney's speech in Lithuania yesterday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov pronounced his remarks "completely incomprehensible," according to the Reuters news service.

Cheney's speech reflected a shift in the administration's tone. On Monday, Rice complained about the Kremlin concentration of power. "The jury is out about where Russia is going to end up," she said. On Wednesday, World Press Freedom Day, her spokesman lumped Russia with China, Zimbabwe, Venezuela and Iran as countries that repress journalists.

Cheney's decision to go to Lithuania was itself a message to Russia. The gathering in Vilnius of democratic leaders from the region is the kind of meeting that might normally rate an assistant secretary of state. It's also the kind that typically irritates Russia, which views such gatherings as hostile.

Cheney made a point of meeting with two of Moscow's least favorite people, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who led revolutions in those post-Soviet republics. Cheney had planned to meet with opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich of Belarus, but Milinkevich was jailed by the Belarusan government last week.

"The regime should end this injustice and free Mr. Milinkevich, along with the other democracy advocates held in captivity," Cheney said. He added: "There is no place in a Europe whole and free for a regime of this kind."

Addressing Russia, Cheney said, "In many areas of civil society, from religion and the news media to advocacy groups and political parties, the government has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of her people." Referring to Russia's brief cutoff of gas to Ukraine, Cheney said, "No legitimate interest is served when oil and gas become tools of intimidation or blackmail."