Media Mirror - 06.06.07

Russian newspapers on Wednesday are forthcoming the G8 summit, analyse U.S.-Russia relations and write about a pre-summit propaganda attack aimed at President Putin. They also give prominence to the Marshall Plan anniversary. 

The G8 summit is on the front pages of all newspapers in Russia. Every paper describes the current situation as worth monitoring and speculates about the issues that are going to cause the hottest discussions: would it be global warming or the ‘new cold war’ of which the global media has been talking for the past weeks.

The event is being paraded through headlines of the Russian newspapers:

“The West is Angry with Putin”, writes KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA, saying that the last three days saw a concentrated pre-summit propaganda attack aimed at the President of Russia. NATO, Condoleezza Rice and President Bush – nearly everybody directly linked with the U.S. system of national security criticised President Putin for ‘cold war rhetoric’ of the past week. The paper, noting that there was not a word of criticism from the European participants of the meeting, or from Japan, still concludes that this is going to be a tough summit for the Russian President.

VEDOMOSTI has an article titled “The Last Summit of the Twins” by Nina Khrusheva, a professor at New School University, New York, who compares George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin – personalities, actions, the main events during their presidencies – and concludes that they are political twins. With the end of their terms of office a new era is going to begin, writes the author.

KOMMERSANT quotes President Bush calling the U.S. relations with Russia a ‘complex’ or ‘complicated’ friendship. However, writes the paper, there will be no showdown between Russia and the U.S. at the summit: Mr Bush wants all controversial issues to be discussed next month during President Putin’s visit to the Bush family estate.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

VREMYA NOVOSTEI writes that the U.S. President’s speech in Prague on Tuesday surprised the listeners with its total lack of anti-Russian rhetoric and a clear aim at a compromise. The paper says that it is possible that the personal touch on which both Presidents relied throughout their terms is destined to rescue U.S.-Russia relations from the dangerous area they have entered.

The same newspaper has an article dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. It tells in detail of the grand programme that, on the one hand, transferred a tremendous amount of aid to the European countries that had suffered during WW2, helped re-create their economies, while on the other hand it also drew them into an alliance with the U.S. that has been serving the U.S. national interest up to this day.