Kremlin takes steps to polish Russia's image abroad

MOSCOW -- The Kremlin is stepping up efforts to burnish Russia's image abroad at a time when relations with the United States have soured and President Vladimir Putin is preparing to host a summit of the Group of Eight industrial nations.

RIA Novosti, the official state information agency, is opening a new office in Beijing later this month while Russia Today, the English-language television channel launched by the Kremlin in December, will soon expand its network of foreign bureaus.

The channel -- beamed by satellite to North America, Asia, Africa and Australia -- is equipped with state-of-the art technology and supported by a $40 million annual budget. It churns out feel-good features about the country's diverse culture and ethnic minorities, and news bulletins with a Russian slant.

Putin has faced calls in recent weeks to ratchet up public diplomacy to improve Russia's international standing. Some elites in Moscow are worried the set-piece meeting of Group of Eight leaders in St. Petersburg in July could be a public relations disaster if the United States keeps up what is perceived here as an ''information war" on Russia.

''People high up in the presidential administration understand the importance of pushing on with what they call the 'Image of Russia' project," says one senior public relations executive for a state-owned company, who asked not to be named.

Among those efforts: state-owned energy giant Rosneft, which swallowed up chunks of jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil company last year, is offering expensive junkets to foreign journalists to show off its good governance of Siberian oilfields.

At Russia Today, chief editor Margarita Simonian admits that marketing Russia to the West is no easy task.

First she faces the stereotypes of bears, vodka, and mafia hoodlums. Then there are the constant accusations from abroad of corruption and authoritarian government.

But for Simonian, 26, it is a daily challenge that she claims to relish. ''We're not dealing in propaganda," she insists. ''We're just trying to give the world a better idea of what Russia is really like."

The attempt to break down prejudices and cultivate sympathies abroad is thought to be led by Mikhail Lesin, a former press minister who is now an adviser to Putin. The campaign is fueled by a deep sense of indignation in Moscow that Russia is being unfairly denigrated for allegedly backsliding on democracy and pursuing a neo-imperialist policy in the former Soviet sphere.

Several critiques emanating from the United States in the last two months have struck Russians as Cold-War style rhetoric, designed to distract attention from Iraq and Washington's attempts to achieve its own goals abroad.

''Russia's economy is growing, the country is coming out of a long crisis and realizing its strategic interests, its strengthening its place in the world," said a recent editorial on the website of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, which dominates parliament. ''This impressive picture of development and resurrection worries the West. Once again the United States is frightened by the specter of threats from the East -- 'The Russians are coming!' "

Russia's leadership was angered last month by Pentagon claims that it helped Saddam Hussein with intelligence on US troop movements in 2003. The National Security Strategy published by the White House on March 16 and a recent report by the New-York-based Council for Foreign Relations also stuck in Moscow's craw for their highlighting of undemocratic trends in the country.

On March 29, another crack in the relationship appeared when Putin accused Washington of impeding Russia's entry to the World Trade Organization.

It's all a far cry from the bonhomie that characterized President Bush's first meeting with Putin in June 2001, when he famously claimed he had looked into the soul of the Russian leader and found him to be ''very straightforward and trustworthy."

On April 2, Bush came under renewed pressure from Senator John McCain not to attend the G8 leaders' meeting in July.

McCain, an Arizona Republican and a potential candidate for the presidency in 2008, has emerged as a prominent critic of Russia's current course, accusing it of curtailing press freedom, propping up the despotic leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, and failing to cooperate with the United States on containing Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Bush said he was disquieted by some developments in Russia but would still attend the meeting. ''I haven't given up on Russia," he said.

Many in Moscow see Washington's criticism and talk of rolling out democracy across the world as ''messianic" and a cover for encircling Russia by drawing former Soviet states into the orbit of NATO.

Some, alarmed by the growing gulf between the two countries, are calling for greater efforts to erode foreign prejudice.

The US State Department has an under secretary for public diplomacy -- defined as ''promoting the national interest through informing and influencing foreign publics." However, Russia has no such post and most of the burden is taken by the information agency, RIA Novosti, which has only recently received adequate funding.

Igor Panarin, a professor from the foreign ministry's diplomatic academy, says: ''There is so much ignorance about Russia in the US: we need to appoint at least a deputy foreign minister to coordinate our own public diplomacy drive."

But analysts predict the charm offensive is more likely to be aimed at Asia or South America than the United States or Western Europe because Moscow has growing trade, military, and energy links with countries in those two regions.

Two of Russia Today's planned bureaus will be in Ukraine and Georgia, the traditional ''near abroad." The channel plans an Arabic language service, and last week it covered Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's visit to Brazil indetail. Dmitry Trenin, a foreign policy specialist at the Moscow Carnegie Center, an independent thinktank, says that is because Russia is undergoing a shift in foreign policy to focus on ties with countries it sees on a similar path of development to itself, such as Brazil, India, and China.

The logic is that Moscow felt shortchanged after its historic decision to join the ''War on Terror" after Sept. 11, 2001. In return, it expected free rein from the United States and Europe to pursue its interests in the former Soviet states. But the West failed to deliver by pushing for NATO expansion, training troops in Georgia, and interfering in Ukraine's elections.

Hardened by that disappointment and emboldened by high oil prices, Moscow now sees no need to pander to the United States and Europe. ''Russia's foreign policy architects see it as an emerging power center." says Trenin. ''There's a clear wish for the country to play in the top league, on its own terms."