Russia's prospects after last Sunday's election of Vladimir Putin as president remain a central preoccupation of Western commentary today. The magazine finds both discouraging and encouraging portents of Russia future.
Corruption is blatant, crime endemic.
It says Putin will have to address both problems directly if Russia is to reform itself. This message is a response to growing pressure from the West to rein in the 100,000 Russian troops there. Now victory for Mr. Putin, a Chechnya hawk who came to public attention as the architect of the war last year, has intensified international scrutiny. Experience in this and the previous war shows, however, that such displays of good intent seldom last longer than the flashes of foreign attention that prompt them. Russia's elections may be making the country less democratic, not more Commentaries in two U.S. national dailies focus on Putin's electoral victory.