Georgia was the "last straw" for Russia

By Oleg Shchedrov - Analysis

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A keen sense the West cheated Moscow out of promised warmer ties after the Cold War explains why Russia, recovered from post-Soviet collapse, has refused to be cowed over Georgia and demanded its views be heard.

"It could have been Georgia or something else, but some kind of 'last straw' was waiting to come along," one Kremlin official commented.

"We cannot endlessly retreat with a smiling face."

Russia's military response to Georgia's bid to retake its Moscow-backed breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and their subsequent recognition by Moscow, has fuelled Western speculation of a reborn Soviet empire striking back.

But things look totally different from Moscow, frustrated at what it sees as the West's failure to put their relations on an equal footing and its attempts to encircle Russia with a new "cordon sanitaire".

The bitterness dates back to 1990, when reformist Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, keen to launch a new age in ties with the West, agreed to pull out troops from East Germany and give the green light to German unification.

Russia says NATO reneged on a crucial promise.

"Moscow's only condition was that NATO did not station troops in East Germany," a top Russian diplomat who took part in talks said. "The promise was given, but soon forgotten."

Some NATO officials challenge this, saying no such undertaking was given.

In the ensuing years relations with the West were further strained by NATO giving membership to Moscow's Soviet-era satellites in Eastern Europe as well as to the ex-Soviet Baltic republics -- Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

Poland and the Baltic states have since become vociferous critics of Russia within the U.S.-led alliance.

In 1999 Russia protested in vain against NATO's bombings of Belgrade in a military campaign which ultimately led to the West recognizing the independence of Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo earlier this year.

"We cannot base our actions on the opinion of a state whose budget falls within the statistical error of the U.S. budget," a senior U.S. diplomat in Moscow told reporters at the time.

Top Russian officials have complained that Moscow's cooperation with the West on key international issues like the fight against terrorism, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea have failed to translate into a qualitative change in relations.

"There is a feeling that the West treats Russia merely as a loser in the Cold War, which has to play by the winners' rules," Vladimir Putin, Russia's president for eight years until this May, once told reporters.  Continued...