Blunt and Blustery, Putin Responds
MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin responded Wednesday to criticism of Russia revealed in United States diplomatic cables published by the Web site WikiLeaks, warning Washington not to interfere in Russian domestic affairs.
His comments, made in an interview broadcast Wednesday night on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” referred to a cable that said “Russian democracy has disappeared” and that described the government as “an oligarchy run by the security services,” a statement attributed to the American defense secretary, Robert M. Gates.
Mr. Putin said in the interview that Mr. Gates had been “deeply misled.” Asked about a cable that described President Dmitri A. Medvedev as “playing Robin to Putin’s Batman,” he said the author had “aimed to slander one of us.”
Mr. King, whose program is carried on CNN’s channels around the world, has long had a reputation for softball questions. So Mr. Putin’s decision to appear on the program allowed his voice to be heard both in the United States and abroad while avoiding being challenged on contentious topics like his own grip on power and the limits on human rights and free speech in Russia.
In the interview, Mr. Putin also warned that Russia would develop and deploy new nuclear weapons if the United States did not accept its proposals on integrating Russian and European missile defense forces — amplifying a comment made by Mr. Medvedev in his annual state of the nation address on Tuesday.
“We’ve just put forward a proposal showing how jointly working, tackling the shared problem of security, could share responsibility between ourselves,” he said. “But if our proposals will be met with only negative answers, and if on top of that additional threats are built near our borders as this, Russia will have to ensure her own security through different means,” including “new nuclear missile technologies.”
Mr. Putin said Moscow would like to avoid this situation.
“This is no threat on our part,” he said. “We are simply saying this is what we expect to happen if we don’t agree on a joint effort there.” Last month, during a NATO-Russia summit meeting in Lisbon, the delegations discussed President Obama’s invitation for Russia to take some role in the future missile shield, perhaps through linkage between Russian facilities and the European shield.
At that meeting, Mr. Medvedev proposed “sectoral missile defense,” which would divide the missile defense shield into “zones of responsibility,” and involve deep coordination between the European and Russian sectors, said Dmitri V. Trenin, a military analyst and director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. According to this plan, Russia would shoot down missiles flying over its territory toward Europe, and NATO would shoot down missiles flying over European territory toward Russia, he said.
NATO’s proposals for cooperation are less ambitious, and some members remain deeply mistrustful of Russian involvement, he said.
Mr. Putin appeared relaxed in the hourlong interview with Mr. King, who first interviewed him in 2000. He said he was “thankful” for President Obama’s softening of rhetoric toward Russia and for his revision of a planned missile defense shield in Europe.
Asked about the arrest this summer of 11 people accused of spying for Russia, Mr. Putin said the agents were not active, but would have “become pertinent in crisis periods, like when diplomatic relations were suspended or cut.”
His comment seemed to address one of the central mysteries of the summer spy scandal: why the agents were passing on information that was readily accessible without spying.
In the interview, Mr. Putin broke from the restrained response Russian leaders have so far given to the WikiLeaks cables, which have so far offered few real revelations about sensitive topics like corruption. The comments attributed to Mr. Gates, in a cable dated Feb. 8, 2010, used the harshest language made public so far.
Mr. Putin said that several American presidents had been elected through the electoral college system even though they did not win a majority of the popular vote, but that Russia did not press the point.
“When we are talking with our American friends and tell them there are systemic problems” with the electoral college system, “we hear from them: ‘Don’t interfere with our affairs. This is our tradition, and it’s going to continue like that.’ We are not interfering.
“But to our colleagues, I would also like to advise you not to interfere with the sovereign choice of the Russian people,” he said.
He played down the impact of the cables’ release, and went on to suggest that they might be fakes being circulated for obscure political purposes.
“Some experts believe that somebody is deceiving WikiLeaks, that their reputation is being undermined to use them for their own political purposes later on,” he said. “That is one of the possibilities there. That is the opinion of the experts.”
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