Ambassador McFaul's or Mike's, as friends and colleagues call him, first steps on arrival in Moscow were marked by a mammoth scandal in the media, internet, Duma and elsewhere. However, it is my strong suspicion that Mike felt victim to some intrigues in the higher places in Washington.

McFaul's record is well-known and pretty illustrious: a Stanford man, about the best Slavist and Russian specialist (some say, Russophile) America has to offer, author of numerous monographs on Russia, etc. etc. Politically he is best known - one might say renowned -- as architect of the "reset" policy in the relations between the USA and Russia, President Obama's helpmeet in the difficult task of straightening out those relations that cried to be straightened out.

All that, however, belongs to his life and times before he donned diplomatic togs. As a diplomat, McFaul has to be part of - and be held responsible for - acts and situations for which he would presumably hate to be held accountable. This article is not an attempt to endorse all McFaul views since I often disagreed with him in the past but if one takes into account the current highly negative atmosphere towards Russia in Washington Mike is probably not the worst option.

A reform-minded Russian blogger, Alexei Novalny, was the target of a photoshopping scam that tried to link him to the discredited plutocrat Boris Bereshovsky. It looks like something the old KGB might have done, so fingers pointed to the Kremlin where Novalny's blog have been unwelcome lately. To retaliate against whoever smeared him, Mr. Navalny ran the real picture, which showed him standing with presumptive Presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, a likely rival for Vladimir Putin in the March 4 elections. Then Novalny photoshopped a hilarious procession of other figures--from Stalin and Napoleon to Putin himself to even a Space Alien. And posted them on his blog.

The message: in the age of the Internet you can't photoshop as in days of old. Come clean!

The Putin regime has little to fear from the latest public protests which, despite drawing large crowds, are apolitical. True politics will only become possible in Russia when both the opposition and the regime focus on the tedious work of practical politics, says Nicolai N. Petro in his highly personal view of recent events.

Kudos are due to both the Russian police and opposition leaders for having managed the second successful mass protest in Moscow without incident and in an appropriately festive spirit. After the Christmas eve demonstration in Sakharov square, the crowd was told that the next protest meeting would be held some time in February since, obviously, nobody wants to disrupt the extended Russian winter holidays which last well into January. By February, presumably, holiday cheer will have subsided and it will be time for another manifestation of civic outrage. As Putin quipped during his televised Q&A with the nation, if these protests are a product of 'the Putin regime,' he is only too happy to take credit for them.

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There are several issues about democracy under discussion in Russia. One is corruption and the stories of major public officials, including V. Putin, enjoying lavish palaces--and owning them?--on a government salary. Powerful elected officials after a few years in any country often come to chafe under the limits to personal wealth that coexist with their much less limited public power. That resentment is the seedbed of public pilf in any country, and that seedbed is apparently well-watered in Russia now. The official typically thinks, "Why is it that I can make others rich, but get nothing for myself?" The public thinks, "If you don't like your job, quit!"
But Putin isn't quitting.

In America, presidents are limited to two four year terms, after which they get a reasonably large annual pension and office staff, plus a presidential library named after them. They also can cash in, or not, in the private sector, based on their friendships and name. That seems to suffice. Almost no US presidents are accused of personal enrichment while in office.)

A second issue is whether freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are truly honored in Russia today, or are they offered only as window dressing? In the past, protests were small and could be ridiculed and criticized officially for not following proper procedures for permits, etc. The size of the recent protests make such ridicule ridiculous itself, and thanks, perhaps to calmer voices in the Kremlin, the approach of mockery has been muted.

What one can say is that politics should not be criminalized (to use Mark Helprin's useful phrase). There may be some corrupt politicians in jail, but there are surely many more in prison on trumped-up charges, guilty mainly of threatening the political prospects of their opponents. In the popular view, courts treat elected officials more leniently than ordinary people. But the opposite is often the case if the official or former official is a dissident.

Thus, at its inception, missile defense had a fruitful purpose-to bring to a close the Cold War, i.e., the division of Europe into mutually antagonistic blocs. Reagan was so concerned that his plans for missile defense not destabilize the nuclear balance and thus deepen and prolong pan-European discord that he offered to share the technology with Moscow that was still the capital of the Soviet Union.

The Obama Administration, having launched its wise and admirable reset by canceling President Bush's plans to deploy a missile system on Russia's borders, has since revived that very bad idea, and thereby torpedoed one of its few solid foreign policy achievements. It plans to park elements of a missile defense system in Poland and Romania, prompting Russia's once and presumably future president Vladimir Putin to ask publicly: "So where is this reset?"

Sadly, Obama has shown himself unable to withstand the pressures of powerful lobbies and factions within his own party for empire-that is to say for the maintenance and expansion of our globe-girdling hive of compliant states.

No country's history proceeds on its own anymore, uninfluenced by events elsewhere. Thus, there was a great deal of interest in Russia in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, just as there were with the Arab Spring. Yet, in the aftermath of the demonstrations against Vladimir Putin and United Russia that followed the parliamentary elections, Putin is blaming the public displays on--Hillary Clinton.

This is like politicians in the American South during the civil rights movement who blamed the demands for change on "outside agitators." If Putin merely expressed annoyance with the tone of U.S. scolding, it would be hard to disagree. Whether it is Clinton or her predecessor, Condolezza Rice, moralizing U.S. Secretaries of State seem to think that they should be constantly announcing what other governments "must" do. It's hard to know what such near-daily lectures accomplish, other than infuriating heads of state with whom we must deal. Once in a while? Sure. All the time; it is a little hard to take.

Nonetheless, Putin cannot imagine that his problems with the Russian people are the result of comments made by Hillary Clinton and the United States government. There was too much Internet evidence of fraud in the elections. One blogger became famous for the beatings he endured in government hands. These protests hardly look like the work of Ms. Clinton or the CIA.

President Medvedev's stern warning to the United States and NATO on the eve of parliamentary elections seems to be directed at domestic audiences, to rally nationalist votes. However, if his intension was to influence U.S. or NATO policies on missile defense, it most likely misfired. Obama is in no position to yield to the Kremlin's demands, and the only thing that Medvedev has achieved with this outburst is to supply ammunition for the White House critics who keep crying foul of the 'reset' policy. Additionally, Medvedev's threat to quit START sounds pretty irrational since this treaty was praised by Moscow itself as one of its most successful diplomatic efforts in recent years.

This is not to say that U.S. missile defense policy is justified. Russia has many valid reasons to complain, but if it wants its voice to be heard, it should use a different approach. Issuing threats and saber rattling did not work even in the Soviet era, and it definitely will not work now. One should add that Moscow's proposal for 'sectoral' defense responsibilities is not very serious, either. Justifiably, NATO says that it cannot delegate its members' defense to a third party.

However, the Kremlin's strong card is its offer to the West to develop and deploy a joint missile defense system. This offer has fundamental meaning since it proves that Russia is absolutely serious about its wish to be part of the global security infrastructure.

RT (Russia Today TV News Network) has covered the Occupy Wall Street movement so extensively and boldly that it begs the question: What does the Kremlin have to do with the OWS movement? From what I have observed in both Russia and the USA, the answer is: Very little or nothing at all, to my regret, which I'll explain later. More than a month-- from September 17 when the OWS started in New York to October 21 when I returned from Moscow to Washington--I watched OWS the way Russians see it, through government-controlled TV channels.

I was struck by how little attention Russian media paid to this massive explosion of discontent that was clearly embarrassing to US government and media pundits who would much rather talk about "lack of democracy" in Russia than American about 1% "plutocrats." After checking online reports from Truthout, I realized that in OWS did not receive a coverage it deserved. So I had remained unaware of the movement's huge scale until I came back to my Alexandria home--and to a new TV set supplied with dozen channels, including RT. Now I'm glued to RT every morning. And what do I see?

A mixed martial arts fight between a long-time Russian champion Fedor Emelianenko and an American fighter Jeff Monson resulted in the Russian's victory, and became the surreal stage for the unthinkable: 20,000 Moscow fans booed and whistled Putin off the stage. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin got up on the stage to personally congratulate Fedor with the victory. However, most of his speech couldn't be heard. People in the bleachers started whistling, booing and screaming "shame!" and "get out!" Prime minister's voice trembled for a split second, but he continued with his speech, speaking louder. Main government TV channel Rossiya was airing the show live, and was unable to edit the booing out. The other government channels edited the booing and whistles out, however, Russian free media exists, and Internet is unrestricted, thus we get the news.

This small event at an MMA fight may mean a big thing for a whole era. In Russia, Internet is free, so is the media, and so are the Russians. And even though Putin will still win the elections (due to the total lack of a viable competing leader) things have changed forever in Russia, on November 20, 2011.

Two decades after the fall of Communism, Ronald Reagan is as popular as ever. Praise for Reagan is routine on the right, but also emanates from the center and not infrequently from the left. This broad appreciation of Reagan is usually bound up with his deft handling of the Cold War's denouement, and yet not a few of his admirers are motivated by a Russophobia Reagan would have found alien. Thus, they wind up undermining his legacy, whether inadvertently or not.

Those who consider themselves admirers of Ronald Reagan, and we count ourselves among their number, should support the deepening of President Obama's reset with Russia under the next Republican administration, which we hope will take office on January 20, 2013, and not a resumption of the efforts of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to strategically encircle Russia.

Although it is still a year to the US presidential election, the fight for the White House is in full swing. In this fight, everything goes, and the Republicans are determined to take away every chance of Obama winning. As he has done rather better in international affairs than in the economy, and the Reset in relations with Russia is among the brightest feathers in his cap, it clearly has to be compromised at all costs, even if the US own interests may suffer in consequence.

One would have thought that John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, has little time to waste. Congress is fiercely debating the impending dramatic budget cuts, attempts to reduce unemployment, and lessen the national debt that is nearing the astronomical $15 trillion, i.e. over 100 percent of GDP. The Occupy Wall Street protest movement is on the rise, and several cities have already seen serious clashes with the police.