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GISMETEO.RU
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Nation    

Russia to defend ‘privileged interests’
Journal Staff Report

KIEV, Aug. 31 – Russia’s use of force to defend its citizens abroad - the argument used to justify the invasion into Georgia earlier this month - will now be a cornerstone of its foreign policy, the country’s leader said.

But particular attention will be paid to those regions in which Russia has “privileged interests,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told three state-owned Russian television channels Sunday.

The comments underscore Moscow’s newly emerged assertive foreign policy increasing fears among political figures in Europe that the strong-arm tactic may be used against Ukraine to try to avert its pro-Western course.

Medvedev said Russia will defend “lives and dignity” of its citizens abroad “no matter where they are,” according to a report by RIA Novosti, a Russian state-controlled news agency.

“We will also be defending interests of our business community abroad,” Medvedev said. “It should be clear that anyone committing an aggression [against the Russian interests] would get a response.”

The comment suggests no easing of Russia’s foreign policy pressure after its invasion into Georgia followed by the controversial recognition of Georgia’s two breakaway territories as independent states.

The developments isolated Russia, putting the world on the brink of a new cold war, with neighbors, such as Ukraine, expressing concerns that Moscow may seek to further expand its influence in the region.

The United States and the European Union have been mulling how to react to Russia’s assertive policy that would re-assure the regional countries, like Ukraine, of their territorial integrity.

“What is most striking about Russia’s justifications is that they are demonstrably inconsistent with its own beliefs, except for the one that matters – the need to be feared,” according to Martin Wolf, a columnist at the Financial Times.

Russia cited the need to defend “lives and dignity” of its citizens when hundreds of tanks and thousands of troops had poured into Georgia in a response to Georgia’s attempt to seize control of its breakaway Moscow-backed enclave of South Ossetia on Aug. 8.

Over the past 10 years, Russia has been giving away Russian passports in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, another Georgian enclave it had effectively controlled, creating a sizable community of “Russian citizens” it had later sought to defend.

Some Ukrainian officials said Russia has been trying to use similar tactic - albeit on much smaller scale - of issuing its passports in Crimea, a Ukrainian autonomous republic dominated by ethnic Russians.

“Nothing in the histories of the Russian or Soviet empires suggests that the principle of self-determination matters a jot. Nor has the Russian state ever cared much about the lives of its citizens,” Wolf said. “Post-Soviet Russia is no different, as the two Chechen wars, with their tens of thousands of dead, have demonstrated. Those, too, were Russian citizens.”

Medvedev, while announcing the new principles of Russia’s foreign policy, pledged to pay particular attention to regions that Russia has been traditionally considering as vital to its interests.

“Russia, like many other countries in the world, has regions in which it has the privileged interests,” Medvedev said. “In these regions are based countries with which it has friendly relations” and Russia “will be very carefully working in those regions.”

Russia’s other foreign policy priorities include “superiority of fundamental international law” over national law in areas that define relations “between civilized nations,” according to Medvedev.

Also, “the world must be multi-polar. Unipolarity is unacceptable,” Medvedev said. “Russia cannot accept world order in which everything is decided by one country, even by such a serious country as the U.S. The world like that is not well-balanced and threatens with conflicts.” (tl/ez)




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