Putin Critical of U.S., but Speaks of Partnership

President Vladimir V. Putin used a year-end news conference Thursday to sharply criticize a wide range of U.S. actions and attitudes on Ukraine, Chechnya, Yukos Oil Co. and the issue of democracy within Russia.

But the Russian leader paired his complaints with praise for President Bush and even called the two countries “allies” whose national interests were bringing them closer.

Putin bluntly described the controversial takeover this week of the private oil company’s core asset by a state-owned firm as a step to redress injustices of Russia’s post-Soviet shift from communism to capitalism. In doing so, he appeared to drop the pretense that authorities’ action seeking $27 billion in back taxes from Yukos was primarily a law enforcement matter.

“You all know very well how privatization took place here in the early 1990s and how, using various tricks and sometimes violating the laws that were in effect at the time, many market participants got hold of state property worth many billions,” he said. “Today the state, using absolutely legal market mechanisms, is securing its interests. I consider this to be quite normal.”

Putin blasted the effort of a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston to block the forced auction Sunday of Yukos’ biggest asset, Yuganskneftegaz, which accounted for more than 60% of the company’s production. He said that the injunction was “totally unacceptable in terms of international law” and that it failed “to comply with international politeness.”

Despite the U.S. court order, a previously unknown Russian financial group successfully bid for Yuganskneftegaz and then was itself sold to state-owned Rosneft oil company, in effect nationalizing 11% of Russia’s crude oil production.

Some of Putin’s harshest words were triggered by developments in Ukraine, where the Supreme Court declared the November presidential election invalid and ordered a revote, scheduled for Sunday.

Putin was asked about a comment attributed to Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski that implied the U.S. preferred Russia to be “without Ukraine,” a former Soviet republic.

Putin said it could be interpreted as revealing “an intention to limit Russia’s ability to develop relations with its neighbors that amounts to a wish to isolate the Russian Federation.”

Putin said that he did not believe this to be U.S. policy and that he would raise the issue with Bush at a summit early next year.

If this really is the Bush administration’s position, he added, then U.S. policy critical of Russian efforts against rebels in Chechnya “becomes more readily understandable” because it means that “there, too, the policy is aimed at creating elements that undermine the stability of the Russian Federation.”

Putin says that Moscow’s fight against Chechen separatists is a battle against international terrorism, and he has complained about suggestions that human rights abuses by Russian forces are part of the problem and that talks might lead to a solution.

In Ukraine, the U.S. and the European Union provided diplomatic support to opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko and Russia backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.

Many observers say Sunday’s revote will determine whether Ukraine moves toward closer ties with the West or restores tighter relations with Moscow.

Yet Putin said Russia and the U.S. were “certainly partners in the solution of some of the most acute problems of our time.”

“That’s above all the joint fight against terrorism,” he said. “I would say, without any exaggeration, that our relations are not those of partners but of allies. Together with the United States, we are the biggest nuclear powers in the world, and we have a special responsibility in terms of arms control and nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

Putin said he was “satisfied with the progress of our relations with the United States, on the whole.”

“Bush himself, in my view, is a very decent man and a consistent man. We have repeatedly said in public that our opinions do not always coincide, but I fully trust him as a partner.”

However, Putin attacked what he called “double standards” in the attitudes on elections and democracy. He questioned how Western countries could support the legitimacy of an election held in Afghanistan and one scheduled in Iraq while denying the legitimacy of balloting in Chechnya and Ukraine under what he implied were better conditions.

Putin also defended himself against charges that he was dismantling democratic institutions in Russia by establishing tighter control over media and creating a top-down political structure. A new system by which governors will be nominated by the president and approved by regional legislatures “is optimal for Russia and does not violate democratic principles,” he said.

“I think that given the vast territory of the Russian Federation and the large number of peoples and ethnic groups on our territory, each having their own way of life and political traditions, and with serious threat of terrorism and disintegration, this is the optimum solution in the present-day conditions.

“Where criticism is constructive, we heed it. But if it’s just mudslinging, we ignore it.”