An impressive delegation of mostly foreign political experts of the Valdai Club gathered on Monday afternoon for a meeting with Vladimir Putin in Sochi. Experts of Nezavisimaya Gazeta register activeness of Putin that has grown lately but are not inclined to connect it with the presidential campaign if only the race does not start ahead of schedule.

When Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos launched an initiative in January to lift visa restrictions between the European Union and Russia, he raised hopes among Russians and Europeans fed up with long lines and bureaucratic headaches.

But nine months later, it is clear that these hopes will not be realized anytime soon — even though President Dmitry Medvedev has been soliciting, and winning, support from individual EU countries.

Critics of the «reset» in U.S.-Russia relations often argue that a true strategic partnership between the two countries is impossible because Russia recognizes few, if any, geopolitical priorities of the United States and doesn’t adhere to its «values.» Writing for the January 2010 issue of The Washington Quarterly David Kramer, for instance, points to «a widening values gap between the two countries.» He elaborates:

Dean Acheson, US President Harry Truman’s Secretary of State, liked to quote a friend who said that being in government made him scared, but that being out of it made him worried. To those of us not privy to the hidden complexities of NATO’s military intervention in Afghanistan, the situation there — and across Central Asia — is extremely worrisome.

As Afghan President Hamid Karzai is said by his critics to be on the verge of casting his lot with Pakistan and the Taliban, the Pentagon has signaled its fear that the war may spread beyond the Pashtun heartland to the largely Tajik and Uzbek areas in the north of the country. The US is reportedly constructing a $100 million «Special Operations Complex» near Mazar-i-Sharif across the border from Uzbekistan.

Analysts taking part in this year’s Valdai international discussion club in Russia met Monday with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Delegates at this annual forum told the media that Mr Lavrov kept an open mind and did not try to avoid sensitive subjects. The annual conference brings together some of the world’s most influential experts on Russia in areas such as political science, sociology and economics.

«To me, Russia’s current effort to improve relations with Poland is apparent,» said Leszek Miller, a former Polish prime minister. «And that effort is creating a resonance in Warsaw.

The Black Sea is a cradle of civilization, trade and cultures, but today it is also a region of unresolved conflicts, porous borders and rivalries.

Terrorism and insurgency are spreading across the North Caucasus, abetted by fighters from the Middle East and South Asia. Everything from narcotics from Afghanistan to supplies for Iran’s nuclear program are smuggled through the region. Georgia remains tense since the 2008 war with Russia; separatists threaten hostilities in the regions of Nagorno-Karabakh and Trans-Dniestr.

Contributing to the insecurity is an absence of effective institutions for Black Sea regional cooperation.

A Russian city of Yaroslavl on Volga is scheduled to host the Global Policy Forum on 9-10 September to focus on measures aimed at boosting international security. The announcement was made in Berlin during a meeting devoted to standards of democracy and diversity of democratic experience.

Yaroslavl, which is going to celebrate its millennium in September, in less than three weeks will again become the venue of a meeting of statesmen and politicians,representatives of business corporations, leaders of science and education, experts in political science, economy and law from many countries if the world.

People from Barack Obama’s Administration promised Moscow ratification of the START-3 treaty. People in Moscow who are privy to certain information and usually know what they are talking about comment in the meantime that they «... would like to see them pulling it off, now.»

The Senate’s Committee for Foreign Affairs will vote the matter in mid-September. Most important battles over the document will take place afterwards, on the eve of the elections of the U.S. Congress scheduled for early November.

The Second World War formally ended on September 2, 1945 with Japan’s surrender. There is a popular saying that a war is over when the last soldiers killed are buried. With WWII, however, things aren’t so simple.

The Second World War was a beast born of WWI, known in Europe as the Great War. Some alternative historians see them as two phases in the same war, separated by a fragile truce. This seems logical: For thirty years, the world tried to destroy itself in trenches and gas chambers, at logging sites and in slums blighted by misery and unemployment. It measured the shapes of skulls and class distinctions, and meticulously calculated the percentage of Jewish or Japanese blood in people destined for death camps or internment camps.

Beset by mounting casualties on the battlefield and deepening disquiet at home over the United States’ longest war, President Obama’s Afghan policy now faces another big headache: the unraveling of central authority in Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian nation that hosts a U.S. air base critical to the battle against the Taliban.

Just a month after agreeing to extend for a year a $60 million lease on a U.S. air base here, Kyrgyzstan’s generally pro-Western but increasingly impotent president, Roza Otunbayeva, has retreated from U.S.-backed security programs that Washington hoped would help fortify a fragile Kyrgyz government.