PUTIN ASKS WHY RUSSIA ALONE SHOULD PAY SOVIET DEBT...

President Vladimir Putin said in Vienna on 9 February that "the situation in [Russia] is becoming more predictable" but that recent positive changes are "just the beginning". He said that Moscow will pursue further economic liberalization as it works to join the World Trade Organization, that it will fight corruption, and that it will build on progress made in the last year in government functioning and cooperation between the executive and legislative branches of government. He reiterated that Russia will pay its debts. But he did ask rhetorically "why should we be paying for all the republics of the USSR, tens of billions of dollars are in question?" The reason for that, not acknowledged by Putin or reported by Russian or Western agencies over the weekend, is that the Russian Federation assumed the debt in exchange for a dropping of claims by the former Soviet republics to Soviet property held abroad.