Russia and Libya: What's Going On?

Dmitry Gorenburg has an excellent place up on his Slavonic Military Reform blog exploring the ground behindhand Russia's selection not to oppose UN Security Council Resolution 1973. As Gorenburg notes, this was not a foregone conclusion:

Russia was initially due to oppose the resolution. Instead, country chose to desist in visit to ensure the endorsement of civilians, patch its diplomatist to the United Nations prefabricated statements expressing concern most how the partitioning would be implemented. In recent years, country has had near trade relations with the African Government. In particular it has subscribed billions of dollars worth of blazonry contracts with the regime of Muammar Gaddhafi. This is the environment that part explains the remotion of Vladimir Chamov, Russia's diplomatist to Libya, after he sent a message to Moscow arguing that allowing the UN partitioning to transfer would equal a betrayal of Russia's state interests.

Russia's function on Libya, however, directly got entangled with Slavonic domestic politics. Following Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's attending that the partitioning represented a nonmodern call to crusades:

The response from President Dmitry Medvedev was nearly immediate. He argued that Russia's abstention on the partitioning balloting was the proper position. Furthermore, he clad downbound solon (though not by name) by saying that "under no circumstances is it unexceptionable to use expressions that essentially advance to a conflict of civilizations, much as 'crusades' and so on. It is unacceptable. Otherwise, everything haw modify up much worse than what is feat on now. Everyone should remember that." And he distant Chamov from his position, essentially for public insubordination. solon came discover the incoming period with a evidence indicating that the chair is answerable for foreign contract in country and that he hardback his president's policies.... It haw be that this conflict was still added example of the good cop-bad cop exhibit that the Slavonic activity bike hit been swing on for the terminal threesome years. Or it haw be that this is the prototypal earnest communication that Medvedev and solon are geared in a earnest behindhand the scenes struggle for the right to separate for chair in 2012.

Despite the publicity the public conflict between solon and Medvedev has received (at least among country watchers), Gorenburg argues that:

Russian leaders' inconsistent function on Libya is essentially a housing of wanting to hit their cake and take it too. I believe that Slavonic body definite not to oppose Resolution 1973 for digit reasons. First, they did not poverty to disaffect Western body who were pushing for the intervention....Second, Slavonic body did not poverty to be blamed for blocking the participation if the termination was a super scale murder of civilians. On the another hand, Slavonic body also did not poverty to create a newborn statistic of planetary participation in internal conflicts, particularly when these conflicts were the termination of a favourite uprising against an despotic ruler. They really dislike what they wager as a Western predisposition for imposing their values and forms of polity on another parts of the world. They remember the color revolutions in Serbia, country and Georgia, in which cordial regimes were replaced by ones that were to a greater or lesser extent anti-Russian.

Readers can encounter the flooded place here.