Disapproving Left to stay on sidelines during visit

The Left’s involvement during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit will be restricted to an official luncheon.

The Left’s involvement during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit will be restricted to an official luncheon. With Putin’s policies no longer conforming to party lines, for Left leaders the good old days of the Soviet Union seem to have become a distant memory.

However, CPI(M) Politburo member Sitaram Yechury and CPI general secretary AB Bardhan will take part in the official lunch to be hosted in Putin’s honour at the Hyderabad House on Thursday.

Though the CPI(M) wants India to focus on its relationship with China and Russia—the party sees the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as a “bulwark” against NATO expansion—it finds Putin’s policies, especially his foreign policy with a US-slant, far from worth appreciating.

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CPI(M) sources say there is nothing much the party can identify with in the polices of Putin or for that matter the Russian Communist Party. The party had come down heavily on Putin after his summit with Bush in Moscow in 2002, where the two countries signed two agreements. Commenting on it, Prakash Karat had written in People’s Democracy that the agreements were “an acknowledgement of Russia’s weakened and subordinate status”.

“The Communist Party of the Russian Federation too has serious apprehensions about Putin’s policies, especially his subordination to the US,” points out a party leader.

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