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Moscow: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev played down differences with his predecessor Vladimir Putin in an interview but the contrast in style and tone between the two men was striking.
Medvedev - a longtime Putin ally - presented himself as a continuity figure during the presidential election campaign this year and he repeated that mantra in the interview, saying the essence of Putin's policies would not change.
"Politicians are also people and they should also have their own tone and their own style," Medvedev said. "But that does not change the basic tenets of policy."
That said, the new president cloaked the message from Moscow in very different words to those of his predecessor.
Whereas Putin blasted Nato's plans to expand around Russia's borders, accused Washington of starting a new arms race with plans for a missile shield and to cut transport links to ex-Soviet neighbour Georgia, Medvedev mentioned none of these issues. The essence of Russia's foreign policy, he said, would be to defend the national interest but it would be guided by "freedom, democracy and the right to private property". Asked about criticism of Russia's foreign policy, Medvedev avoided Putin's oft-laid charges of Western hypocrisy and double standards.
Complaints were normal, he said - after all, Moscow also had its problems with other nations. When asked about threats to Russia, he listed common global problems and then named poverty and corruption as specific problems for Russia.
Putin, who grew up in a rough neighbourhood where he chased rats down staircases, liked direct, earthy language, jokes and colloquialisms. But Medvedev's middle class upbringing as the child of university professors showed in his considered, lawyerly phrases laced with subordinate clauses.
Moscow (Reuters) Russia wants to negotiate a "serious" pact governing its relationship with the European Union but not one overburdened with detail, President Dmitry Medvedev said.
Speaking ahead of a key summit between Russia and the EU in Siberia starting today, Medvedev said Russia saw itself as "a major European state ... which defines itself as part of Europe" but avoided any criticism of EU member states. The summit is expected to launch negotiations on a much-delayed partnership agreement covering the occasionally testy relations between Moscow and EU. "I don't consider the European Union a hard or difficult partner," he said. "But it is a partner which periodically encounters difficulties."
EU states are nervous about the bloc's dependence on energy from Moscow - the supplier of a quarter of Europe's gas.
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