I think I am getting the picture now- reseat has many subtexts and one of the subtext is an elaborate attempt to paint Medvedev the modernizer- the Peter The Great of Russia in the 21 century! RT does this without a hint of irony even when evidence on the grounds does not support this powerful assertion. In reality, the greatest achievements of Russia’s history in since the fall of the Soviet Union had been achieved under the leadership of former President of Russia and now its most able Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin [Putin, of course, represents for the U.S the “hard edged” not “soft” Russia!]. I will not bother examining recurring ways of “feminized” and therefore “none threatening” Russia this author represenst of “the new Russia” for the U.S readers. Of course, this will go down well with the RT’s U.S readers but for many of us- we do not depend on RT to inform us- partly because RT does not bother to do it analysis of the complex and, in some cases, contradictory forces driving the modernization of Russia including apparent closer relations between Germany and Russia. I do not think that President Medvedev has yet achieved a major project for Russia. That does not means he cannot do that-only he has not done any significant achievement as the President of Russia [anti-corruption was one of his pet protects and it is going nowhere].. The real architect of the Modernization of Russia-which is closely linked to Germany are two mean: Gerhard Schroeder and Vladimir Putin! http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20080

No European country is more in favor of aiding Russia in its quest for the modernization of its economy than this(and the next) German government. The German elites remember one lesson of the twentieth century well. Conflict with Russia spells doom for Germany. So its not just a question of more Euro's in trade for the German export machine. It's a question of the survival of Europe. And without real friendship between European states and Russia this is unlikely. The President of Russia says that Russia is a European state. As a European I agree. The histories of Germany, France , Brittan are deeply intertwined with the history of Russia. The Russian government has set out the item that will mark a qualitative change in EU and Russian relations. The abolition of the visa requirement. I look forward to this. It will mark a new stage in the peaceful interchange of peoples on this old continent. The EU now has the most important decision to make since its foundation. Don't let the people of Europe down.

July 17, 2010, 00:58, Babeouf wrote > No European country is more in favor of aiding Russia in its quest for the modernization of its economy than this(and the next) German government. > The German elites remember one lesson of the twentieth century well. Conflict with Russia spells doom for Germany. So its not just a question of more Euro's in trade for the German export machine. It's a question of the survival of Europe. And without real friendship between European states and Russia this is unlikely. The President of Russia says that Russia is a European state. As a European I agree. The histories of Germany, France , Brittan are deeply intertwined with the history of Russia. The Russian government has set out the item that will mark a qualitative change in EU and Russian relations. The abolition of the visa requirement. I look forward to this. It will mark a new stage in the peaceful interchange of peoples on this old continent. The EU now has the most important decision to make since its foundation. Don't let the people of Europe down. ================================== Brittan is not, has never been and never will be part of Europe. Presently they is Trojan Horse preventing EU from US occupation. PR101 is correct about Mr.Putin and Mr.Schroeder who alone had the courage to say no to the butcher of Crawford who was receiving orders from God like Charles Manson. Evil Empire doesn't want to see peaceful Europe, that much is or should be clear to anyone following their actions around the Globe.

Dimitri Medvedev has a big hill to climb in the sphere of corruption in Russia, as well as forging a stronger link with Europe. But the biggest hill of all is the relentless effort by those in other countries to keep Russia and the EU apart. This is driven by fear, a realization that should all of Europe be united, and working together, it will constitute an economic region as powerful as anything our history has seen. And Dimitri has as many in Russia fighting the true union of Russia and the EU, as external influences. It's the same with corruption. There is a formidable wall of anti-progress in front of him, built by those who wish to keep the current status quo for as long as possible. As a Briton who now lives in Russia, i used to be ashamed at the clumsy, obvious, and cowardly attempts by successive British governments to marginalize Russia, and keep it "separate" from Europe, on behalf of instructions from across the pond. Now i'm just irritated, as they're not worth the effort, or time. I'm more than happy to become a Russian/European citizen, as i can see the "angloWall" coming down sooner than we think, and Russia and the EU excluding Britain more and more from the process of building the current world's most powerful union of nations. British history is interesting to Russians, and Russian people enjoy visiting the "home of the English language." But there's many Russians visiting, living, and working in Europe as well, and if a common EU/Russian visa free zone should come about, excluding Britain, then we'd see those former Russian/British ties diminish in favor of a united Europe, and Britain's ongoing deceit as the trojan horse of Europe would lose much of its influence, at least what little it has remaining. British foreign policy cannot be trusted at all, and i urge not only Russia, but the rest of the EU to tread carefully when dealing with the British government and their masters abroad, as all is NOT what it seems, and never will be.

Russia has greatly improved (socially, politically and economically) since the fall of communism. It is now a world class member. Under President Medvedev and former President Putin ( now prime minister ), Russia is improving it's legal system and economic laws. I have always said Russia is a great nation.

Through RT, Russia offers the following self-congratulation: “From its reasonable response to the US ‘spy’ case, to accepting responsibility for some unfortunate moments in history, Moscow is showing a fresh new face on the world stage.” Let's be realistic. Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table at the UN was an “unfortunate moment of history.” Episodes of prolonged, bloody, indiscriminate murder, mass enslavement and of brutal foreign occupation which Moscow imposed on half of Europe for half a century are something rather more than “unfortunate moments in history.” Nor has Moscow accepted responsibility for even “some” of that wickedness, let alone for all of it, or brought even one solitary person who committed such crimes against humanity to answer for their actions in a court of law. The most it has done, after decades of evasion and lying, is to now admit that some of it actually happened. This is hardly heroic and deserves no congratulation, least of all self-congratulation. Nor has Russia’s syndrome of denial evaporated by any means. For example, pose the question to official Moscow whether a Soviet occupation of the Baltics ever happened, and you will be vehemently accused of blasphemy, re-writing of history and of being a Nazi – all of which means, in broad terms, “No!” Whether Moscow’s face to the world is new and fresh is a matter for debate. But its heart is apparently just as hard, old and cold as ever.

Marzipan6 After being shut out of the greatest engineering project in the 21 century- the Nord Stream gas pipeline that takes gas from Russia to Germany by passing all those Russiaphonic countries, the Baltic nations should think hard that their incessant anti-Russian stance is bad for their bottom line. The Russians are more clear and enterprising than you would like to give them credit to them. The Russians have great sense of history. I have so much respect for the Russians.

To PR101: The Baltics aren’t anti Russian, but anti- aspects of Russian behaviour. They have no control at all over Russia’s behaviour, and if that behaviour is directed against them, they can hardly be anything but against it. “Russophobic” is an excellent word in the context in which you wrote it – it means “fearful of Russia”. Russia’s past atrocities against the Baltics, its present denial of those crimes and its on-going frequent expressions of anti-Baltic hostility make unease about Russia quite realistic. Undoubtedly resistance to the pressure that Russia exerts against the Baltics is not good for their bottom line, just as you said. But acquiescence to Russia’s suffocating embrace would be much worse, from the top line to the bottom. Unfortunately that’s the kind of neighbour that the Baltics are stuck with. I disagree, though, that Russians have a great sense of history. They have a great sense of mythology that poses as history, and a great emotional attachment to it. But most are remarkably ignorant of important aspects of their own and their neighbours’ actual Soviet-era history. Given Stalin’s and his successors' pathological distortion of the record Soviet deeds, it is not surprising that in 1992 Russians emerged from the rubble of Soviet collapse with a hugely distorted view of that past. But it is shameful that today, almost 20 years later, so many of those toxic myths still prevail.

Marzipan: Aaah, more of the same from you. To correct some of your ongoing fallacies. Part 1. There is a sizable chunk of the Baltic population that is anti-russian, including you. After being subjected to your virulent anti-russian diatribe over a quite a some time, and the misleading messages you put out, in your pretense that you somehow represent all those souls from the Baltics, I've come to the conclusion that you're getting left behind, and are quite happy living in some sort of bubble, and while the rest of the planet pushes forward, and tries to make something of their own lives, you're happy to keep lobbing rocks over the fence. The Soviet Union wasn't just Russia. And a cursory glance on the interlink will reveal that over half of those soviet era leaders weren't Russian. Russia's past "atrocities" against the Baltics are contestable based on perspective, and the debate goes on. During the Soviet era, the Baltics, along with Ukraine, received the lion's share of resources, goods, finance, etc.. Some of my wife's family live in Estonia (and are native Estonians, not settled immigrants), and they freely admit that at the time the Estonian branch of the Communist Party got everything they wanted, and more, and were eager to perpetuate that system on their fellow countrymen and women. (Putting power in the hands of a few, sounds familiar, yes?) On top of that, Grandma tells me that having the Russians replace the Nazis was the ideal for many, except for that section of the Baltic population that enthusiastically embraced the Nazi philosophy, and still do, evidenced by their continued determination to hoist the swastika, drenched in the historical blood of millions, including nearly 30 million Russians, over the heads of their fellow citizens, in Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius. If you are really happy with that, then go for it. The Russians will no doubt effectively defend their borders, but you can bail yourselves out of your own stupidity this time.

Part 2 It's frankly nonsense to assume that Russians are always ready to "overrun" you again. This is evidenced in the gas project running through the Baltic Sea, enthusiastically embraced by Western Europe, because we're all sick and tired of being held to ransom by you chaps, every time you want to regurgitate your view of history, and need a few extra transit Euros to buy more stuff. It may come as a shock to you, but Russians aren't interested. For the same reason you give of being "neighbours", Russia is stuck with you, and the constant whining. Can't you people build the courage to stand on your own two feet? I'll bet you Kazakhstan that if any sort of significant threat was made against Estonia by an "external force", you'd be at the border whining that somehow Russia "owed" you something. (Russian's are tired of the same old disingenous rhetoric coming out of the Baltics. You're really on your own this time around.) You've got your opportunity now, to really do your own thing. With Nord Stream well advanced, and the new Oil and natural Gas terminals almost finished in Saint.Petersburg, there will be no need at all for Russia to do any business with the Baltic States. I'm sure you'll be pleased with that, and i wish you well for the future, as you finally HAVE to stand on your own two feet, and not use history as a smoke and mirrors exercise, to keep trying to extract more and more out of modern Russia in place of doing an honest day's work. If you continue to insist that you're the "poor victim", then claim compensation from Georgia, Stalin's birthplace, or Ukraine, the home country of more than one soviet leader, or perhaps Poland, who's Soviet representative built the secret system that murdered so many, including millions and millions of Russians....... Good luck with that. The Soviet Union might have had it's HQ in Moscow, but it was far from a purely russian affair. We're all democratic now, so get off your backside, and stop whining.

To Alexstone: Part 2 (6) I don’t know why you report your grandmother’s as you do. Perhaps you misrepresent them, or take them out of context, or age has clouded her memory, or perhaps she was one of the approximately 100 Estonians (that’s all there were!) who were Communist party members in 1939. In this very weekend’s travel section of a major Western newspaper, Estonian travel guide Kristi, when asked who was worse, Nazis or Communists, was quoted as answering, “You can’t choose between bubonic plague and smallpox.” That sums up Estonians’ attitude overall. Estonians learned to co-operate with their Communist occupants, that’s all – they had to, to survive. (7) It’s a deeply offensive falsehood to claim that the swastika flies over Baltic capitals. (8) Russia’s continued embrace of Stalin’s Baltic propaganda, its hostile meddling in internal Baltic affairs, its verbal attacks against the Baltics in official international forums, its failure to honour its own promises to return looted Baltic cultural treasures, its refusal over nearly two decades to accept a single one of many Baltic invitations for a Russian head of state to visit (truly weird for a country that claims to want normal relations with neighbours) and its tireless attempts to drive wedges between the Baltics and their European friends are all consistent with a mindset that has not lost its appetite for re-establishing Baltic control. (9) From Russia’s viewpoint, there are many reasons to do business with the Baltics. Experience has shown that Russian railways, port facilities and general transport and organisational structures can’t cope with transit of import and export goods without Baltic ports. It has tried to by-pass these in the past, but it has always had to come back. The Nord Stream pipeline will not change this, as the Baltics are not a transit point for Russian gas anyway. Apart from all the above, Alexstone, there was nothing wrong with your posts.

To Alexstone: Part 1 I’m happy to comment on points you raised. But I won’t follow your example by imputing motives to you, as this says nothing about the subject under discussion. I’ll stick to verifiable facts, just as I have always done. (1) There’s no “sizeable chunk of the population that is anti-Russian” in the Baltics, nor am I. Please don’t try to tell me what I feel; it’s for me to tell you what I feel, and I tell you that I’m not anti-Russian. From my visits to Estonia, from speaking with scores of Estonians both there and abroad, from the experience of my own family and from widely reading the Baltic press including in Estonian, I know that there is no inherent anti-Russian feeling in the Baltics either, but there is a very profound antipathy to many Russian policies and actions – and justifiably so. Many Russians, being either willingly or genuinely ignorant of Soviet Russia’s crimes in the Baltic, mistake this for a personal antagonism; it is not. (2) I represent no one other than myself, and have never claimed otherwise. (3) Estonia is very happy to push forward, and if you look at its record of achievements since 1991 (and separate these from Russian propaganda) you will see that it has done so spectacularly – membership of EU, NATO, the OSCE, the Schengen and Euro zones, and being the leader amongst East European countries in most economic and social indexes is hardly being stuck in the past. But Russia is apparently stuck in the past clinging to significant Stalinist lies. (4) Soviet power structures were not exclusively manned by Russians, but they did exclusively serve Russia’s national interests, and the Soviet Union was an expression of Russian chauvinism, not anyone else’s. (5) There’s nothing contestable about Soviet Baltic atrocities. These were unprovoked, inhuman and massive, commenced before WW2 and extended to long afterward. Do educate yourself on this matter, you seem to understand very little about them.

Marzipan6 I think it is not credible for you to say that your views posted here are expressively and emphatically anti-Russian. Stalin was a Georgian and many of Soviet leaders were not Russian. It is too late now though: the Russian have changed the geopolitical paradigm of the Russia’s relations to the Baltic States when Russia secured the cooperation of key members of the “Old Europe” to build new energy corridors to secure Europe’s access to Russian gas. As I have indicated already, the Nord Stream gas pipeline is a response to the anti-Russian agenda of the Baltic states. Alas, now the South Stream is going to undo the “Other One” by providing Russian gas to southern Europe. Only few days ago, Bulgaria signed on to the Russian South Stream natura; gas pipeline. Yes Bulgaria has also agreed to host a portion of the U.S Missile Shields but Bulgaria knows signing on to the South Stream is more profitable than hosting the U.S Missile batters and radars. The political and economic elites of the Baltic nations will come to Moscow and seek new “partnership” with Russia. The Russians can sit and wait. Also by “Russso-phobia” I do mean present fears based on ideology and hysteria not on facts of Russian threatening plans of actions against Baltic States.

Japan and South Korea are essential also for "modernization" as Russia can share the same kind of "chaebols" as South Korea, which after all have led Korean development (Samsung, for example) or Japanese "keiretsu" (Misthubishi, for example) For Russia probably it is better the Korean and Japanese way of modernization as it has to take the necessary steps in a shorter period of time.

PR101, you read too much into the Nord Stream matter. Its dynamics are interesting, but scarcely of crucial significance. To Russia, trade is not just commerce, but an instrument of central government-manipulated foreign policy and a lever whereby to pressure those it wants to punish and reward those it wants to benefit, all of course, for Russia’s own interests. Gas is an excellent medium for this game – Russia has some and Europe needs some. But because of the historically few pipelines, Russia was unable to punish the targets of its displeasure without disrupting downstream supplies for other countries that it wished to cultivate. So more pipelines were needed. Europe understands that in Russia it does not have a normal commercial partner, but its desire for energy is so great that between crises, it chooses to succumb to self-imposed amnesia. The Baltics, of course, would like the strategic advantage of being transit lands for Russian gas, as this would give them a degree of security against Russia turning off the tap just to target them. It would also make commercial economic sense for Moscow to build the pipeline overland rather than underwater, but Russia would like its own advantage of being able to pressure the Baltics with its energy weapon without handicapping others downstream, and so it opted for the sea route. This poses some genuine ecological hazards in the almost land-locked Baltic, given the amount of wartime ammunition, poison gas containers and shipwrecks scattered across the sea-bed. And it gives Russia a pretext to position more naval ships in the Baltic, ostensibly to defend the pipeline. Given the Baltics’ historical experience of Russia, this does not thrill them. However, none of the above is neither calamitous nor provides a clear ace card to anyone. And Russian gas supplies, although still vast, are becoming more limited, and in some years time Russia will have difficulty in supplying all its customers anyway.

To: Marzipan6 I am not reading anything that is not backed by facts on the grounds onto the Nord Stream gas pipeline project. This project represents number of important things: Symbolically, it represents the coming together of Russia and Germany in ways that consolidates the relationship between these two countries for as long as gas follows from Russia to Germany and to Europe. Politically, this is a break through project for Russia for it was able to bring on board Nordic European countries of Finland, Norway and Denmark into this project despite powerful pressure from the United States. Economically this project demonstrates Russia’s engineering sense of imagination, endurance, ingenuity and enterprise! Without a doubt, this project has led to a paradigm shift between Russia and “the Old Europe” and also between Russia and the anti-Russia, pro U.S Baltic states and Poland- the latter being the real losers. In fact, the breakthrough in Nord Stream has given a new impetus to more and more nations backing up Russia’s the South stream over, you know, the other “dream pipeline” with the Opera name! http://en.rian.ru/business/20100705/159698493.html

Marzipan6 Take a look at this link. Now, do you think this bit of information is a result of BIG Bear Russia bullying Baltic countries or it came about as a result of NATO and the U.S pushing Missile Shields and NATO membership to the doorsteps of Russia? http://en.rian.ru/mlitary_news/20100720/159873088.html