By Paul Belien
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Today, Vladimir Putin is hosting the summit of the “G8” nations (U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia) in St Petersburg. History is playing cruel tricks. Though some optimistic and freedom-loving people (Ronald Reagan for example) may not have been surprised if they had been told in 1986 that by 2006 Russia would be hosting the summit of the G8, which is supposed to be a club of democracies, no-one could have imagined that the KGB would be doing so.
according to andrei Illarionov, the former chief economic adviser to Putin, the world must realize that Russia's leadership is becoming increasingly authoritarian. Illarionov, who was responsible for organizing the G8 Summit, resigned last December. He has called upon Western organizations to sign a petition expressing solidarity with Russian civil society in opposing the Russian government's disregard of freedom.
“This petition is a very important signal from the international community in support of Russian civil society, which is currently subject to harsh attacks from the Russian authorities. Those attacks are destroying real democracy and free markets and are rapidly transforming the country into an oil- and gas-based authoritarian sultanate,” he says.
Western leaders, however, are grovelling at Mr Putin's feet because of Russia's oil and gas supplies. according to Mr Illarionov oil is “the devil's excrement” for Russia. The higher the price of gas and oil, he says, the less freedom the Russian regime allows its subordinates. Moreover, the Russian regime is also using gas and oil as a weapon to blackmail Western Europe and bully its East European neighbours. Today it looks as if Russia, which is turning into a dictatorship, is becoming a major superpower again.
and yet, Russia is in deep trouble. It has an abundance of oil and gas but its demographics show that it will soon lack the single most important resource: people. Time is running out for Russia. During today's summit in St Petersburg Vladimir Putin may well be at the pinnacle of his power.
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