Eight years of Putin in the Russian Presidency: A balance

Relations with Old Europe, in other words, the members older and richer of EU, are much better. Even countries that recently elected right wing leaders who talked badly about Russia during their campaigns, like Germany and France, did not alter the politics of cooperation and rapproachement with Moscow. This brings great benefits, since you do not rebuke while receiving Russian gas and oil, nor with agreements in the sectors of high technology, principally in aerospace: the great industrial pride of the EU, the Airbus 380, the biggest passenger plane in the world, has parts designed and manufactured in Russia. And the Russian and European space agencies are already working on a project of a manned joint mission to the Moon.

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However, there are two important points of conflict with the countries of Old Europe: the independence of the Serbian province of Kosovo (to which Russia objects), and the refusal of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the legislative and presidential elections in Russia alleging restrictions to their work. Great Britain is a special case inside the EU, since it remains removed from many policies of the rest of the countries and nearly always unconditionally supports the USA, even when their European partners and population are opposed (as it happened with the decision to participate of the invasion of Iraq in 2003). Russian-British relations had gotten sufficiently worse enough when London gave political asylum to Boris Berezovski and Akhmed Zakayev. The first one is an entrepreneur accused of several economic crimes not only in Russia, but also in Brazil, where they have petitioned for an arrest for money laundering involving the Corinthians soccer club, and who affirmed to be planning a coup d'etat to remove Putin from power. The second is the "minister of the exterior of the Ichkeria," as the Chechen separatists call their country accused by Russia of being involved in terrorism. The death of Litvinenko and the Russian refusal to extradite Lugovoi made relations still worse.

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