Topic - Vladimir Putin

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  GAFFNEY: Blind ideology

  Last week, President Obama feted communist China's Xi Jinping, the man who hopes to lead his country as it emerges as the world's next superpower. Mr. Xi must have been delighted to see press reports that his host is poised to end America's claim to such status - at least with respect to the traditional means of measuring it: nuclear weaponry.

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  Russia's Medvedev meets with critics on reforms

  Russian President Dmitry Medvedev held an unprecedented meeting Monday with opposition leaders, who said they were encouraged by his promises to make it easier for anti-Kremlin parties to take part in elections, but he was unwilling to meet protesters' main demands.

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  Cars circle central Moscow in anti-Putin protest

  Hundreds of cars circled central Moscow on Sunday to demand that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin allow free elections in Russia.

• Briefly: Europe

  Hundreds of cars circled central Moscow during an opposition demonstration Sunday to demand that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin allow free elections in Russia.

• SANDERS: China's confusion about roles in the shifting world order

  Minxin Pei, the most original of current Sinologists, makes the point that authoritarian/totalitarian regimes inherently give priority to protecting regime leaders over the nation's long-term interests.

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  HANSON: Iran 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0

  In the manner that Jimmy Carter's reset foreign policy crashed in 1980 with the communists entering Afghanistan and Central America and American hostages taken in Iran, and was followed by a suddenly tough, new Carter Doctrine, the Obama administration likewise is forced to reset its policy.

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  BOOK REVIEW: 'It Was a Long Time Ago, And It Never Happened Anyway'

  Anyone who has paid heed to Russia in the two decades since the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union has come to realize that things have not worked out all that well. Those desiring better lives, seeking the freedoms enjoyed by other peoples of the world, threw off the shackles of an authoritarian state that routinely persecuted, imprisoned and murdered its citizens by the millions.

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  Gorbachev: Putin has 'exhausted' his potential

  Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has "exhausted" his potential as Russia's leader, Mikhail Gorbachev declared Thursday, saying Mr. Putin's inability to change the Kremlin's political system might prompt more massive anti-government protests.

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  EDITORIAL: Homage to Homs

  The violent repression of Syrian activists is accelerating, and there is no international consensus on halting the killings. The Arab Spring has reached its limits in the besieged and bloody city of Homs.

• Embassy Row

  Rarely does a diplomat speak so bluntly, but with that one word in a Twitter post, the U.S. ambassador to Russia set off a buzz in the blogosphere this week, as he slapped down a critic who accused him of trying to topple the government in the Kremlin.

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  EU threatens new sanctions on Syria

  The European Union will impose harsher sanctions on Syria, a senior EU official said Wednesday, as Russia tried to broker talks between the vice president and the opposition to calm violence. Activists reported at least 50 killed in military assaults targeting government opponents.

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  Moscow's support for Assad well-calculated

  By bluntly using its veto power to block a U.N. resolution urging Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, Russia has shown a willingness to defy the West at a scale rarely seen since the Cold War times.

• SANDERS: The world's great wait for resolutions

  In a look around the world, the striking characteristic is the number of crises awaiting resolution. Their outcomes seem almost artificially suspended, and their interactions and their ultimate effects on the world are major question marks.

• Russia's unlikely protest song rocks rally

  The most popular protest song in Moscow today comes from burly men in blue berets, unlikely heroes of a peaceful middle-class movement challenging the strongman rule of Vladimir Putin.

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  Inside the Ring

  U.S. intelligence agencies threw cold water on the President Obama's thus-far-unsuccessful effort to "reset" relations with Russia by making concessions to Moscow.

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