Riga, Latvia – President Bush used the 60th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat to warn President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Saturday that “no good purpose is served by stirring up fears and exploiting old rivalries” in the former Soviet republics.
“All the nations that border Russia will benefit from the spread of democratic values, and so will Russia itself,” Bush said in a speech at the Small Guild House, a neo-gothic meeting hall in the heart of Riga’s Old City.
“Stable, prosperous democracies are good neighbors, trading in freedom and posing no threat to anyone.”
The day before a planned meeting and dinner with Putin, Bush warned him once again about retreating on democracy, saying that “all free and successful countries have some common characteristics – freedom of worship, freedom of the press, economic liberty, the rule of law and the limitation of power through checks and balances.”
In the past year the United States has grown concerned over Putin’s prosecution of business leaders, his increasing control over the press and his involvement in the affairs of Georgia and other neighbors.
Putin has not reacted positively to such criticism from Bush, and the Russian president told the CBS News program “60 Minutes” in a segment airing tonight that Bush has little business lecturing him about democracy when the 2000 presidential election in the United States was decided by the Supreme Court.
In a joint news conference with Baltic leaders in Riga earlier Saturday, Bush put more pressure on Putin by calling for “free and open and fair” elections in Belarus, the last dictatorship in Europe, whose president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, is backed by Putin.
Bush also did not dispute the premise of a question from a reporter implying that the United States is behind revolutionary change in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
Bush, who is on the second day of a five-day trip to Latvia, the Netherlands, Russia and Georgia, is trying to ensure that his attendance at the celebration of the 60th anniversary in Moscow on Monday of Nazi Germany’s defeat does not endorse the Soviet repression and rise of totalitarianism that followed.