He describes himself as "a European dissident" and the Russian media has welcomed him with open arms. On a state visit this week, the Czech President showed that he is keen to develop economic and personal ties with Moscow — a policy which Hospodářské Noviny remarks is not without its disadvantages.
By Ondřej Soukup and Vladimír Šnídl
Hospodářské Noviny
Photo: AFP
Václav Klaus' state visit to Russia comes just a few days after he provoked an outcry in Europe by imposing yet another obstacle to his signing of the Lisbon Treaty. In Moscow he told his hosts that he was "seriously concerned by the plan to reinforce European integration."
Klaus is one Czech politician who is not afraid of adopting a strongly pro-Russian stance, unlike Mirek Topolánek's government, which backed a policy of stronger links with the United States until it collapsed in April.
On the occasion of a visit to the United States in September, Klaus declared that Moscow was much less of a threat to the Czech Republic than an over-regulated European Union. In a recent interview with [the neo-conservative American daily] the Washington Times, he averred that "the political system and freedom in Russia is now the highest and the best in the history of Russia in the last two millennia."
Russian media idol
When he was prime minister from 1992 to 1997, Václav Klaus generally adopted a pro-western line. It was only after he left the government that he began to explicitly criticize European integration and the United States. This change of course was later confirmed when he expressed his reservations about NATO's bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999.
It was also during this period that the Russian media first took an interest in him. Today, many Russian journalists actively promote Klaus to the extent that he now occupies much more space in the Russian media than all of the other Eastern European leaders. His statements on "the gratuitous Russophobia" of the Western elites are especially popular with pro-Kremlin journalists, and also with the renowned Russian political analyst Mikhaïl Delyagin, who in a recent article on the Lisbon crisis presented an alleged quote from Klaus, which states that accession to the European Union has resulted in considerable financial losses for the Czech Republic....(Remainder.)
