Британское издание The Times считает В.Путина персоной 2013 года Лисенкова АВ 2490500@gmail.com, domanova_na@gov.ru === Событие: британское издание The Times считает В.Путина персоной 2013 года. Издание отмечает, что он находится на пике карьеры. Он одержал победу в Сирии, на Украине, а также в истории с Эдвардом Сноуденом. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article3960759.ece News Man with a plan: latter-day tsar who put the growl back into Russian bear; THE TIMES INTERNATIONAL PERSON OF THE YEAR VLADIMIR PUTIN President Putin will look back on 2013 as a vintage year in his well-planned career, writes Roger Boyes Roger Boyes 994 words 30 December 2013 The Times T 1; National 8 English © 2013 Times Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved It has been a good year for the judo sixth dan Vladimir Putin, who has hip-flipped President Obama on Syria, wrestled the EU to the ground on Ukraine, tripped up the opposition at home and rescued weaker team players such as President Assad of Syria and Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower. When he slips into heavily-guarded retirement some time in the 2020s, Mr Putin will probably look back on 2013 as a vintage moment, the high point of a career that already boasts two full presidential terms and a stint as prime minister. It was the year that he became the post-Communist world's most eligible bachelor, having divorced Lyudmila, his long-suffering wife. More importantly, he succeeded in one of his most enduring ambitions: to bring Moscow back to the international high table. At his year-end news conference in the Kremlin he was talking like the captain of a Premier League side rather than as a grumpy midfielder. Even yesterday's horrific suicide attack on Volgograd, where ten months before Mr Putin had staked out his Russian nationalist credentials during the Stalingrad anniversary celebrations, is unlikely to blight his reputation. It highlighted his failure to deal with terrorism in the Caucasus, but the President is expected to use the bombing to rally Russian and international support around a pre-Sochi Winter Olympics crackdown on Islamic radicals in the region, especially in Dagestan. It was the Syrian insurgency, though, that propelled the President back into the front ranks of effective world statesmen. Scenting President Obama's reluctance to bomb Damascus — even as cruise-missile laden warships crowded into the Mediterranean — the Kremlin leader offered him and David Cameron a way out. The narrow, but achievable and worthy aim of taking apart President Assad's chemical arsenal was a face-saver for the West. And it established Mr Putin as a Middle East player once again; for Arab leaders and the Iranians he was suddenly the man who knew how to head off Western-led regime change. Soon Russia was being offered port facilities in Egypt and was approached by President Rowhani. Yevgeny Primakov, the former KGB man and ex-Prime Minister who taught Mr Putin all he knew about the Middle East, could not have done it better. There are three keys to the Putin method, all of which can be deduced from his masterwork, Learning Judowith Vladimir Putin. First, he thinks two moves ahead. "If you have dealings with Putin, you'd better have a plan," says Ulrich Ladurner, a German analyst. The European Union assumed almost to the last minute that President Yanukovych of Ukraine would make sufficient concessions to be allowed to sign an Association Agreement. When he did not, the EU had no follow-up plan. The Kremlin leader was ready and waiting with a $12 billion package that will keep Ukrainians warm this winter and stave off bankruptcy. Second, a real victor creates problems in order to solve them. Ukraine was so close to going bust in part because Russia drove it to the brink with its trade tariffs, the closing off of markets, arguments over loans and gas pricing. Similarly, Mr Putin claims the laurels for releasing people — from the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky to the Pussy Riot performers — who should not have been there in the first place. The blunderbuss tactics of Alexander Bastrykin, Russia's powerful chief investigator, such as absurdly charging Greenpeace demonstrators with piracy, allows the President to turn everyone into a supplicant. The judoequivalent is to throw your opponent to the floor, simulate generosity by helping him up but stare menacingly at him as you do so. The Putin stare has become a fixed feature of his ruling technique, as it used to be of Tsar Nicholas II. Third, it is not enough to defeat an opponent; he has to lose the will to fight except on your terms. The year 2013 was the one when the President's most vociferous and plausible opponent Alexei Navalny was arrested on fraud charges, convicted but allowed to run for Mayor of Moscow and stay out of jail. As anticipated, he did not win but could still try to present himself as a presidential challenger in 2018. With a conviction, that will be almost impossible — but not if the Kremlin waives some rules on his behalf. Mr Navalny is still being kept in play. Mr Putin, then, is a winner, for this year at least. Next year is likely be altogether different. At least some of the theatre of amnesty and pardons is about smoothing the path to the Sochi Games in February, defusing any political disruption for what is supposed to be a show of Russian munificence, a lovable Russia led by a President who loves labradors. Some of the features of the six-year run-up to the Games — the extraordinary levels of corruption, the silencing and buying off of insurgents in the nearby North Caucasus, the blatant disregard for environmental norms — will return to haunt Mr Putin as soon as the Olympic torch has been passed on. It was an artificially unifying project in a country straining with frustration. "Will the absence of an ambitious, consolidating project amid a stagnating economy, exacerbate political and economic instability and the centrifugal forces that have perennially plagued such a large country as Russia?" asks Anna Arutunyan, author of The Putin Mystique. The prospect of unravelling authority could turn Mr Putin towards better domestic and economic management, rather than power-play abroad. If that happens, the winners of 2014 may well be the Russian people rather than the opportunist who leads them. David Aaronovitch, page 26 News UK & Ireland Limited Document T000000020131230e9cu0007t + Related Articles