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Vladimir Putin’s Russia is evolving in contradictory ways: its impressive economic progress, fueled by oil and gas exports, is counterbalanced by retrograde political trends. These ambivalent vectors, combined with Russia’s increasingly assertive regional conduct, will pose major policy challenges in 2006. The US and the EU have important security interests vis-à-vis Russia but declining leverage, making Transatlantic coordination imperative.
Mark Medish, an international lawyer in Washington, is a former special assistant to President Bill Clinton and senior director of the National Security Council for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs (2000-2001).He also served as deputy assistant secretary of the US Treasury (1997-2000). He is now Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.