The Media Mirror: what's in today's Russian newspapers?

The Belgrade visit of Dmitry Medvedev is featured in newspaper commentaries, and there’s an unwelcome prophesy about Russia-U.S. relations.

IZVESTIA writes Dmitry Medvedev’s visit became his first solo mission abroad. If Medvedev wins the election, the support of Serbia will become one of his main foreign policy priorities, at least for a time. An expert, Sergei Markov says, Medvedev is showing his electorate that he is going to continue Vladimir Putin’s policy of maintaining Russia’s national sovereignty and containment of the U.S.

ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA. The paper reminds readers of a warning Dostoevski issued a hundred and fifty years ago – that the Slav brothers in the Balkans may drag Russia into a conflict that is of no concern for the Russian national interest. The paper says Dmitry Medvedev managed the balancing act well and demonstrated the continuity of Russia’s policies by deed, not word.

VREMYA NOVOSTEY says Moscow has found an original way to support Belgrade in its struggle for territorial integrity of Serbia and simultaneously advance its gas strategy.

The same paper quotes unnamed Albanian sources in Kosovo: there’s a secret plan prepared by the UN mission, the Kosovo government and the EU experts. The plan, says the paper, prescribes the suppression of any influence of Serbian government institutions in Kosovo. By the plan, says the paper, all UN units and groups are supposed to transfer their functions to the EU civilian and police mission and the local government.

NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA’s deputy Chief Editor Yulia Petrovskaya gives advice to the Serbian and Russian governments: to build their Balkan strategies, having taken into account the fact that Kosovo has been lost by Serbia. She suggests they don’t turn to primitivism in politics. In this regard she mentions the recent statements by Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s NATO ambassador, and the attacks on foreign embassies in Belgrade that sprang from a government-sponsored meeting.

VREMYA NOVOSTEY writes that the first Vice-President of the Academy of Geopolitical Studies in Moscow predicted that there’ll be a war between Russia and the U.S. in 2012 – 2015, with Russia breaking in three parts and some territories annexed by the U.S. The paper says, no one believed his dark predictions made amidst a celebration of the Day of the Defenders of the Motherland.