The Biggest Bully.(World Affairs; RUSSIA)(Vladimir Putin)

Byline: Owen Matthews; With Anna Nemtsova in Moscow

Vladimir Putin's bellicose language and aggressive style has cost Russia friends in the neighborhood.

One of the most powerful myths of Vladimir Putin's era is that he is leaving Russia a more powerful country than he found it. At home, that may be true: there is little doubt that most Russians are better off today than they were when he took power. But eight years of threats and disputes have done little to boost Russia's standing in the world. And in the former Soviet Union, Putin has presided over a catastrophic shrinkage of the Kremlin's power, both hard and soft. "Russian authority in the [Commonwealth of Independent States] has grown much weaker during the last eight years," laments Kremlin-connected political strategist and Duma deputy Sergei Markov.

When Putin came to power there were Moscow-friendly regimes in Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova. Now all of those countries are members of an informal anti-Russian, pro-NATO alliance known because of its member countries by the acronym GUAM. Back in 2000 the Kremlin was still very much the power broker in Central Asia, thanks in large part to Russia's monopoly on energy exports. But on Putin's watch, the people-power "colored" revolutions in Kiev and Tbilisi brought Western-friendly presidents to power, and the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline allowed Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to export their oil directly to the West, without being dependent on Moscow's good will.

Instead of building bridges with the new regimes, the Kremlin chose to pick fights with almost all of its neighbors. Some were trivial, like a bust-up with Estonia over the moving of a war memorial. Others were over deep fundamentals in Russia's relations with its former satellites, like the 2006 spat with Ukraine over cheap Russian gas supplies, which culminated in a gas cutoff to Ukraine--and, by accident, the rest of southern Europe. The common theme is that Russia has always chosen confrontation, usually accompanied by loud media campaigns on state-controlled television. But yelling has not done much to gain influence or trust. "Putin had no steady and clear policy for the CIS, and Russia's neighbors quickly realized that Russia's politics of bullying was inconsistent," says former Kremlin adviser Georgy Satarov, now ...