Putin on Bush: the court makes the King

Vladimir Putin served notice yesterday that his country’s relations with Britain would never recover while London remained a base for antiRussian dissent.

Speaking to Western journalists and academics in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, near the border with Georgia, where Russia fought a bloody conflict last month, the Russian Prime Minister covered a wide range of foreign policy issues in typically blunt and confident style.

His central message was that Russia did not want to engage the West in a new Cold War but that it would react if provoked, as it feels it was last month in the Caucasus, where it judged that its interests were being threatened.

The former President stepped aside this year to make way for Dmitri Medvedev but spoke and acted very much like a head of state. At times he displayed anger, particularly when discussing the deployment of US warships off the Russian Black Sea coast.

Much of Mr Putin’s criticism was aimed at the Bush Administration, which he accused of training and arming the Georgian military and encouraging its leadership to launch last month’s assault on the breakaway province of South Ossetia. “Should we have wiped the bloody snot off our face and bowed our head? Should we have waved our penknives?” he asked.

The American President was a man of honour and integrity, Mr Putin said. It was members of the Bush Administration who were to blame for tensions between their two countries. “I still hope we will maintain good relations, but it is the court that makes the king,” he said.

He spoke fondly of his relationship with President Bush, saying, only half-jokingly: “I treat President Bush better than some Americans would.” He made a direct threat against Poland and the Czech Republic, warning them that Russian nuclear missiles would be aimed at their territory the moment they allowed US interceptor missiles to be deployed there.

His message to Britain was less apocalyptic but no less worrying for British officials who have been trying to repair damage caused to Anglo-Russian relations after the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent killed in London two years ago by operatives suspected to be working on Moscow’s orders.

Mr Putin said that he understood that British asylum law protected the rights of antiPutin figures such as Boris Berezovsky and the Chechen rebel leader Akhmad Zakayev. But he denounced Britain for allowing them to carry on their campaign on British soil. “Why are you allowing the territory of Great Britain to fight Russia? Why do you allow Great Britain to be used as a launch pad?” he asked. “That is why it is not possible to build a normal relationship.”

It would be like Russia allowing known IRA terrorists to use Russia as a safe haven to plan attacks, he said.

He insisted that, far from using excessive force against Georgia, Russia had shown restraint. Russian tanks could have captured the Georgian capital Tbilisi in four hours.

Mr Putin, who has governed Russia for the best part of a decade, was at pains to describe his country as a power on the global stage that wanted respect and its interests taken into account – but did not want a confrontation with the Western powers.

“We do not have any imperial claims on anybody,” he said. Cold War warriors in the West were trying to revive the old contest between the Soviet Union and the West. “There is no more Soviet threat but they want to resurrect it. Russia is no threat to the US or Europe,” he said.

More colourfully, he warned the US not to repeat the mistakes of the Roman Empire. “A Roman politician began and ended every speech saying that Carthage had to be destroyed. Eventually, Carthage was destroyed and the area around it assaulted but the Roman Empire was eventually destroyed by the Barbarians. We have to look out for barbarians.”

Mr Putin insisted that he was preoccupied with Russia’s economic and social problems and that real power rested with President Medvedev. “He had to give the orders in South Ossetia. He had to recognise the country’s independence. These were his decisions. Unless the commander-in-chief gives an order the army will not move,” Mr Putin said. “I never try to give him advice. I never bother him.”

Mr Putin also showed a more conciliatory side. Asked about nuclear weapons, he said that the time might come when they could be phased out. “There are technological developments in conventional weapons that could make nuclear weapons obsolete,” he said. “We should close this Pandora’s Box.”

Times Recommends

• Times Charity Appeal: SolarAid
• Is it Black Monday all over again for Dubai?
• Behind the scenes at the biggest deal