Putin: Clinton fueled protests

MOSCOW – The Russian leader on Thursday accused U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of inciting protests against his country’s troubled parliamentary elections, an unusual personal attack suggesting that one of the Obama administration’s main foreign policy initiatives is unraveling.

Warning that Russia needs to crack down on “interference” by foreign governments, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin complained that Clinton had denounced Sunday’s elections as fraudulent before she had reliable information. He said her criticism had mobilized his political opponents.

“She set the tone for some activists in our country and gave them a signal,” Putin said in televised remarks. He added that the U.S. is seeking to influence Russian politics with the aim of weakening a rival nuclear power.

Putin long has been wary of U.S. efforts to promote democracy and human rights, and he delivered his harsh comments as he launched his campaign for Russia’s presidential election in March. He is expected to win back the job he left four years ago because of term limits, but may have a harder time after his United Russia party suffered an unexpected setback in the parliamentary balloting.

Although Putin has served as prime minister for the last four years under his protege President Dmitry Medvedev, Putin has been widely regarded throughout that period as the most powerful man in Russia.

His outburst is the latest sign that President Barack Obama’s much-publicized effort to “reset” relations with Russia, which his aides have portrayed as one of his most important foreign policy achievements, is in trouble, said analysts in both capitals.

“Russian-American relations are like driving a bicycle,” said Andrei Kortunov, president of the New Eurasia think tank in Moscow. “The slower the speed, the more chances to fall.”

Washington and Moscow are in a bitter standoff over NATO’s planned missile defense system in Eastern Europe. The long-standing deadlock appeared to worsen last month when Medvedev threatened to deploy nuclear missiles close to Europe’s border to target NATO missile defense installations.

On Dec. 1, Medvedev announced that he had put a new early-warning radar system on combat alert. The NATO missile defense system, he said, “causes significant problems” for Russian security.

The United States and Russia also have clashed all year over sanctions against Iran, the crackdown on protests in Syria, the NATO-led air war in Libya, the Arab-Israeli peace process and other concerns.