Russia: Mr Putin's forked tongue

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/19/russia-putin-forked-tongue

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If there is a more irritating sight on the international stage than Vladimir Putin's vulpine visage when he is feeling pleased with himself, it is hard to think of what it would be. His usually immobile features relax sufficiently to betray an immense self-satisfaction as he swings with aplomb into his usual harsh but fair routine.

So it was yesterday at his annual big press conference. Questions, many of them pre-planned or at least crafted with especial care to play to his strengths, were fielded with casual ease. The Russian president's special style is to say unreasonable and sometimes unbelievable things in a reasonable way. For example, he denied there had been any Russian pressure on Ukraine to end its negotiations with the European Union. He put his hand on his heart to swear the bailout and cheap gas which he has promised to the Ukrainian leader, Viktor Yanukovych, also had nothing to do with that decision.

It was all about brotherly love, Mr Putin said, seemingly unaware that by using that phrase he pre-empts any fair discussion of Ukraine's choices. Families, after all, must stick together. Yet Ukraine is also a member of the European family, as is Russia itself. None of these complexities interested the Russian leader. Mr Yanukovych, giving his own press conference in Kiev, warned Western nations to keep their noses out of his country's affairs.

The Russian government's readiness to throw people into prison when they get in its way, bending the legal system to do so, has a long history, but has been a particular characteristic of Mr Putin's rule since the detention of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the confiscation of his Yukos empire in 2003 – the foundation act of the Putin era. The beauty of this strategy is that you are able to dispose of opponents and critics under cover of the law, but you can then get credit later for a measured clemency, as with Mr Putin's indication yesterday that a pardon for Mr Khodorkovsky is on the way. Murmuring that Mr Khodorkovsky has served 10 years and that his mother is ill, makes Putin seem humane. But it was not humane to put him there in the first place. In lesser key, Mr Putin sought praise for the release of the Greenpeace and Pussy Riot detainees, but not without a final swipe at Greenpeace as an agent of foreign powers and at Pussy Riot as desecrators of Russian womanhood

Finally, since the chances of a nuclear exchange between Russia and the west are now zero, Mr Putin's announcement that Russia has not yet decided to deploy new Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad is simultaneously ridiculous and obtuse. Yet he manages to make it sound as if he is trying to reassure a nervous Nato when he says: "Let them calm down." It will be time to calm down when Mr Putin stops speaking with a forked tongue.

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