Putin Will Host G-8 In a Russia Under Ever Tighter Control

Russian president Vladimir Putin (Dmitry Astakhov - AP)

MOSCOW -- Six years into the presidency of Vladimir Putin, who will host President Bush and other leaders of the industrial world at a summit this weekend, political freedom is severely constrained in Russia.

While tolerating dissent in some pockets of society, the state is relentlessly tightening its control in parliament, political parties, regional governments, courts, activist organizations and the mass media. And it is bringing strategic industries such as energy, aircraft and automobiles back under its control or delivering them into the hands of compliant tycoons.

Russia is a profoundly different place than the country that was the engine of the Soviet Union. Moscow and St. Petersburg are temples of consumerism. The economy is growing quickly -- 6.4 percent last year -- driven by billions of dollars in revenue from the vast reserves of oil and gas and other resources that stretch from Poland to the Sea of Japan across 11 time zones.

Putin enjoys approval ratings -- now at about 70 percent -- that any president would envy. But under his direction, the Kremlin has reined in much of the debate and discourse that characterized 1990s Russia. Its fear of political challenge is felt in every corner of Russian life.

As parliamentary elections approach in 2007 and a presidential vote the following year, there is little serious doubt about the outcome: victory by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party and Putin's chosen successor, assured through control of major media outlets, new electoral laws and a stifling of both financing for and participation in opposition politics.

"They are building a fortress to protect their power," said Georgy Saratov, an official in the administration of former president Boris Yeltsin who now heads Indem, a private group that monitors corruption.

Western optimism about Russia's democratic growth has dissipated in the four years since Russia was awarded the 2006 chairmanship of the Group of Eight, a club of major industrialized nations that also includes the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Japan. The annual summit of its leaders will convene at a palace outside St. Petersburg.

Foreign governments have also expressed concern that Russia is increasingly using its vast, state-controlled energy resources as an instrument of coercion in foreign policy.

In January, a dispute with Ukraine led to temporary cuts of Russian natural gas supplies to that country and to Western Europe. Criticism followed that Russia was not a reliable partner, despite its stated desire to make "energy security" a key element of its G-8 agenda. The Russian government portrayed the matter as a simple pricing dispute with Ukraine, which it blamed for the cuts in supply farther west.

Critics also say Russia is using its sway against democratic governments in former Soviet republics on its periphery. It has cut off the sale of wine and other crucial export commodities from Georgia, which has a pro-Western government. And it has strengthened relations with Uzbekistan and its Soviet-style government.

Putin's system is often called a "managed democracy." Critics use the term to mean a drift toward authoritarianism under cover of law, while supporters depict the system as a period of state-building and stabilization that is a necessary prelude to an open society.

"We want to be a free nation among other free nations and cooperate with them according to fair rules," said Vladislav Surkov, Putin's deputy chief of staff, at a briefing for foreign reporters.