From Reset to Recess?

Just two weeks prior to Russia’s recent parliamentary elections (and the street protests that followed), President Dmitry Medvedev went on Russian TV. Looking sternly into the camera, surrounded by flags and bookcases, Medvedev surely confused millions of Russian citizens as he unleashed phrases like “strategic offensive weapons,” “early warning radar station,” and “missile defense system data.” Some would have been forgiven for concluding that Russia was on the brink of war on the western front.

The gist of the televised speech was Russia’s direct threat to deploy missiles in Kaliningrad region if NATO went ahead with its missile defense sites in Poland. This despite a tacit agreement with the United States on a missile defense system that would include Russia, part of the famed “reset button” in bilateral relations.

Needless to say, Medvedev’s speech went over like a lead balloon in Washington. Security analyst Roman Pukhov said the Kremlin, unable to get America to accept Russia’s security doctrine for Europe, had switched to a “Plan B,” timing it with the election season. The Carnegie Foundation’s Dmitry Trenin commented that the “reset” appeared to be “in recess” in the run-up to the elections.

“For Washington, Russia has fallen far down on the list of priorities,” Trenin wrote in the New York Times. “The Russian political and security establishment, by contrast, continues to be obsessed with the United States.”

This recess was on full display in December as both sides yipped and snapped at each other following massive election fraud and subsequent street protests, the largest since the early 1990s.

A week before the December 4 Duma vote, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin implied that the U.S. government was using the Russian election monitoring group Golos to manipulate the election process. “It would be better if they spent this money to pay back their foreign debt and stop their ineffective foreign policy,” Putin declared before thousands of supporters at the United Russia congress.

Golos, a Moscow-based group, faced immense pressure over the following week, which the White House called a “pattern of harassment.” Further, the White House statement said, “We are proud of our support of Golos.”

Two days after the vote, nearly 1000 demonstrators were detained in Moscow and St. Petersburg, some for up to 15 days, including popular blogger and activist Aleksei Navalny. The demonstrations, lock-ups, sham trials and rubber-stamped decisions that followed the election resembled events in Belarus one year ago, after President Alexander Lukashenko received 80 percent of Belarusans’ votes in what was widely regarded as a rigged election.

The bilateral sniping continued after the election. After U.S. President Barack Obama raised “flaws in the way the elections were conducted” with the Russian President in mid-December, Medvedev snapped.

“I have to say, I have a pretty good personal relationship with [Obama],” Medvedev said at a United Russia meeting, “and we understand each other rather well, but I had to tell him one thing: you can evaluate our elections however you like, that’s your business. But when, the next day, that old tune starts up, when there is chastising in the worst traditions of the Cold War, that is outrageous. That is definitely not a ‘reset’.”

If this is indeed a recess, just how long will it last?