The G8 Balance

In a two-part Yezhednevnyi Zhurnal essay on the run-up to the G8 summit, which opens in a few weeks' time, moderate Washington analyst Nikolai Zlobin comments that in Russia (my tr.)

According to opinion polls conducted by the Levada Center, almost 72% of our citizens consider that the USA presents a threat to Russia's security, and 23.5 believe that the main threat from the US consists in the propagation of its influence on the republics of the former USSR. And the policy of limited containment in Eurasia and Asia, which is already balancing on the edge of a limited confrontation between the two powers, the mutual conflict between them which is at present limited by the specific geographical framework of some of the post-Soviet lands, will be strengthened. While the boundaries of limited confrontation will inevitably be enlarged, embracing new regions both in Eurasia and beyond it.

While Zlobin takes a positive view of the forthcoming summit, supposing that "any, even unproductive dialogue is far more productive than confrontation," he wonders whether the present Russian leadership will be capable of taking advantage of the opportunity it offers.