俄羅斯在蘇聯瓦解後，和過去前蘇聯的附庸國關係一直很敏感，尤其是前幾年顏色革命，一些其週圍的國家，選出向西方傾斜的總統後，該地區就一直不穩定。這些俄國週圍的國家因為在過去被蘇聯併吞時代，俄羅斯人移入相當多，有的更有俄國的軍事基地、軍港，因此，雖然獨立了，仍深受俄國影響之苦，不僅國內的種族問題，還有文化問題。因此，莫斯科市長挾其新興民族主義，到週圍國家大做外交，花大筆錢支持其他國家中的俄羅斯人及其區域，並且公開倡導這些俄人地區獨立，造成這些國家極大困擾。一般而言，國際上對倡議其他國家境內的獨立運動都相當避免，但是因為俄國勢大，公開在其週圍國家鼓吹其內部地區獨立，也沒受到國際譴責。
Mayor of Moscow speaks out for Russians in former Soviet republics
By Clifford J. Levy The New York Times
Monday, October 27, 2008
On a clearing in this disputed city, where enemy homes were bulldozed after the conflict in August, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov promised this month to build a new neighborhood for the South Ossetian separatists here.
Grinning widely before a boisterous crowd, which hailed him as a liberator, Luzhkov said he would spend more than $100 million on houses, schools and shopping centers. "We are celebrating a great victory - a victory for freedom and independence," he declared.
The pledge was notable for its cost - a sizable sum in this impoverished breakaway enclave of 70,000 - but also because Luzhkov is the mayor of Moscow, not Tskhinvali. The money is to come from Moscow's city budget.
Yuri Luzhkov is a mayor with a foreign policy. A former Soviet apparatchik who yearns to restore Russia's regional hegemony, he has supported ethnic Russians and stoked separatism in nations along the country's borders. He has championed a new Russian nationalism that the Kremlin effectively backed with force when it wrested South Ossetia from neighboring Georgia this summer.
Over the past decade, Luzhkov, 72, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars from Moscow's well-padded city budget in Russia's "near abroad," several city officials said. He has supported pro-Russian separatists in Moldova, built highways in rebellious Georgian enclaves and constructed housing for the Russian military on the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine.
His enigmatic role unnerves Russia's pro-Western neighbors because he flouts diplomatic rules that prohibit aid to separatists. When foreign governments protest that he is violating their sovereignty and destabilizing their countries, he says he is merely expanding Moscow's sister-city relationships. The Kremlin says he is acting as a local official or a philanthropist.
But the ambiguity seems purposeful. Russia's paramount leader, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has sought to undermine new pro-Western governments that took power in the so-called color revolutions. Luzhkov is, in a sense, spearheading Putin's counterrevolution.
"In this type of foreign policy, someone has to carry the aggressive message, and Luzhkov is very suitable for this because he thinks it and really believes it," said Konstantin Remchukov, owner of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a Moscow newspaper. "So they use him deliberately."
Luzhkov offered typically pointed remarks at the groundbreaking this month in Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, for the neighborhood, to be called the Moscow district. "What the heck is Bush thinking?" Luzhkov told the crowd. "He boasts that America supports the aspirations of people for freedom and independence. But the president of America should come to Tskhinvali, wrecked but alive, wrecked but with people who are experiencing joy and freedom."
Short and stocky, a Soviet-style proletariat's cap covering his bald head, Luzhkov is often shown on state-controlled television journeying abroad. A few days before he arrived in South Ossetia, he went to Abkhazia, the other breakaway enclave in Georgia, where he was also greeted as a hero.
Luzhkov has been the primary Russian patron of the two enclaves, whose ambitions spurred the conflict in August, and he has long required his city to conduct relations with the separatist governments as if they were independent nations. Only after the crisis did the Kremlin follow suit.
He is so popular in South Ossetia that a street was named after him here in Tskhinvali. The South Ossetian president, Eduard Kokoity, referred to him as "a dear friend who is one of us."
But he is the bête noire of leaders who took power in the popular color revolutions that swept Eastern and Central Europe over the past six years, especially the Rose and Orange Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, respectively.
The Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, professes to loathe Luzhkov, and the feeling is mutual. (During his speech here, Luzhkov called Saakashvili "subhuman.")
Luzhkov, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has also called for Russia to reclaim Crimea from Ukraine. Many Russians consider Crimea, which has an ethnic Russian majority and a Russian naval base on the Black Sea, an integral part of Russia.
If it becomes the next flash point between Russia and the West, Luzhkov will in no small part be responsible. He has nurtured separatist groups in Crimea that since the Georgia conflict have a new battle cry: We will be next.
In May, when Luzhkov got off a plane in Crimea, he was greeted by Ukrainian security service agents who warned him to stop fomenting separatism. He instead proclaimed in a speech that Sevastopol, the site of the Russian naval base, belongs to Russia.
"Is it right for us to keep silent?" Luzhkov said. "We are speaking the truth."
The next day, Ukrainian officials barred him from Ukraine and began investigating his activities in Crimea, including his support for a cultural center, Moscow House, that he set up in Sevastopol.
Ukraine said it was also looking into the affairs of Luzhkov's wife, Yelena Baturina, a billionaire who is Russia's richest woman. The Ukrainians contend that she has assisted him by investing money in areas where he is active.
The Georgians have their own inquiry into Luzhkov. To the South Ossetians, though, any attempts to go after him only underscore the importance of his support.
"If someone comes to your house to kill you, the person who helps you first, the person who extends his rescuing hand to you, how would you feel about him?" said Zalina Abayeva, 38, a government worker who was in the crowd welcoming Luzhkov to Tskhinvali. "That is how we feel about Luzhkov."
Luzhkov's nationalism sprang from the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, which deeply pained Luzhkov and many other Russian leaders who came of age at the height of Soviet power.
They were embittered by Russia's economic plight in the 1990s and said that the West was taking advantage of Russia's weakness by encroaching upon its zone of influence. Those feelings hardened when NATO admitted former Soviet satellites and republics.
Luzhkov also focused on the plight of millions of ethnic Russians who after the breakup found themselves living in other former Soviet republics. He said he believed that these people had been abandoned by the Kremlin under President Boris Yeltsin, so he sent tens of millions of dollars in aid to them.
When Yeltsin negotiated a treaty with Ukraine in the late 1990s, Luzhkov said it amounted to the "surrender of Crimea."
Since he became mayor in 1992, Moscow has been transformed from a dysfunctional and shabby city into a flashy, traffic-choked metropolis. Luzhkov has overseen a building bonanza, including a financial complex on the Moscow River that will include the tallest skyscraper in Europe. He even has his own architectural style - buildings topped with triangular turrets, popularly called Luzhkov towers.
City officials would not specify how much Luzhkov had spent abroad, and government budgets in Russia are opaque. Alexander Pogorelov, a spokesman for the city's department of international relations, would say only, "We are engaged in offering aid to those considered Russian compatriots."
Sergei Mitrokhin, an opposition lawmaker on the Moscow City Council, said the amount over the past decade was hundreds of millions of dollars. Two other city officials from the governing party, who asked that their names not be disclosed for fear of retribution, concurred.
Mitrokhin said he had opposed such ventures because Moscow had immense needs. "If it is international politics, then the money should be given out from the federal budget," he said.
The city of Moscow has also become one of largest owners of resorts and other property in Abkhazia, which has Black Sea beaches and was a popular vacation area in Soviet times, Georgian officials said. The Russian government has assisted the enclaves as well, giving weapons to their soldiers and Russian passports to their residents, but Luzhkov often seems to take the lead.
Luzhkov has devoted even greater attention to Crimea, which many Russians consider a nearly sacred, if disputed, part of their patrimony.
This peninsula on the Black Sea was part of Russia until 1954, when Khrushchev transferred it to Ukraine. It mattered little then because both were part of the Soviet Union. But after Communism's fall, Crimea's ethnic Russians, who make up 60 percent of the population of two million, had to answer to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, not Moscow. Then came the Orange Revolution of 2004, led by Ukrainian nationalists who are hostile to the Kremlin and want to join NATO.
Much of the friction revolves around Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which has a base in Sevastopol. The Ukrainian leadership has announced that the fleet must leave when its lease ends in 2017. It has also begun requiring the use of the Ukrainian language - Ukraine's official language since independence - in public life.
"Ukraine's leadership is showing an absolutely clear tendency toward the suppression of all things Russian - the Russian language, Russian culture, Russian literature, Russians on their territory," Luzhkov said in August.
In Sevastopol, a city of 350,000, Luzhkov has deepened the Russian presence. He has constructed a branch of Moscow State University, Russian Orthodox cathedrals, schools, a sports complex and other facilities.
The fervor that Luzhkov has helped whip up was evident last month at a rally in Sevastopol on a hill lined with graves of Russian soldiers who had died defending the city when it belonged to Russia.
Waving Russian flags and singing Soviet anthems, residents praised Russia's victory in Georgia and spoke of Luzhkov as a brother in arms. They said he was helping to free them from Ukrainian tyranny.
The city's chief Russian Orthodox priest, the Reverend Sergei Khaluta, blessed the rally. "Truth is with our country!" he said, and it was clear that he did not mean Ukraine.
Blast kills 2 near rebel region
An explosion has killed the mayor of a small town near the separatist region of Abkhazia, The Associated Press reported from Tbilisi, Georgia, on Sunday, citing the Interior Ministry.
The explosion early Saturday morning killed Gia Mebonia, the mayor of Mujhava, while he was inspecting a house damaged by overnight shelling. A villager was also killed and a local police officer was seriously wounded. A ministry spokesman, Shota Utiashvili, said the authorities found an antenna near the blast site and suspected the explosives were detonated by remote control. Utiashvili blamed separatists and their backers.
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