The visit of the NATO Secretary General to Moscow is the focus of the press report this Tuesday.

VREMYA NOVOSTEI, under the headline “No Love, just Business” has a series of expert opinions on the relations between Russia and NATO and the situation concerning the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, or CFE Treaty.

Alexander Pikayev of the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations says: “A good part of the issues causing tension between Russia and NATO are, in fact, problems with Russia – U.S. relations.”

“Actually, things are not as bad as we may hear. Russia-NATO co-operation within the Council has so far exceeded all expectations,” the expert continues.

“Especially the co-operation in Afghanistan that came into being quite unexpectedly but became successful and now plays the role of a link that helps prevent the further worsening of Russia-NATO relations,” Mr Pikayev concludes.

Retired Foreign Intelligence General Gennady Evstafiev of the Center for Policy Studies in Russia believes: “It’s a pity that our NATO partners treat the treaty as a currant bun, picking the currants – that is, our newly-proposed amendments and additions, out of it, and leaving the bun, or the current version of the treaty, to dry and crumble.”

And MOSKOVSKI KOMSOMOLETS quotes General Leonid Ivashov of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems as saying: “Europe doesn’t really like the military domination of the U.S. The steps currently being suggested by the Kremlin will cause Europe to seek a compromise on the CFE treaty.”

“Russki Mir”, this is the name of a new fund created in Russia. “Mir” means “the world”, “peace”, and also a traditional Russian village community. The newly-appointed director, well-known political scientist Vyacheslav Nikonov, says in an interview to KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA that the fund’s main objective is the promotion of the Russian language and helping ethnic Russians living abroad to maintain their cultural identity. First of all, he says, the fund will have to study the experience of the British Council, Goethe Institute, Alliance Françoise and the Chinese Confucius Council. 

NOVAYA GAZETA reports a fund-raising campaign in Krasnoyarsk, launched in order to build a monument to a ten-ruble banknote. The note depicting views of the Siberian city is soon going out of circulation, being replaced with a bi-metallic coin. The article itself is written with a considerable dose of irony over the fact that a monument to a banknote has become a priority while the promised monument to Admiral Count Nikolay Rezanov, the founder of the Russo-American Company and Russian California in the early XIX Century, still exists only in a full-scale gypsum model three months after the 200th anniversary of his death in this city. Money makes the world go round.