Is it a mistake for President Barack Obama to only meet with President Dmitry Medvedev?  Andrew Kuchins thinks so.  From the Moscow Times:There should be no illusions about where ultimate decision-making authority in Russia resides today. The "tandem" is a fiction, of course. Obama must operate under the assumption that on any issue of importance to him -- from nuclear arms reductions to Afghanistan to Iran -- the ultimate arbiter for Russian policy is Putin.This does not mean that meeting with Medvedev is a waste of time, but it must be assumed that every position taken by Medvedev has been blessed by his mentor. Obama must also harbor no illusion that the United States can take measures in Moscow to empower Medvedev or his Western-leaning colleagues in the government.  (...)Since Putin is clearly the most important and powerful figure in Russia, I hope that ...

Back in mid-October, Samuel Charap and Andrew Kuchins published a thoughtful op/ed piece in the International Herald Tribune entitled "Russia's Peace Offensive," which argued that there were signs that Dmitry Medvedev was striving for a more cooperative tone during his speech at Evian, signaling the beginning of a campaign to thaw the recent freeze in relations with the West. Perhaps somewhat preemptively, the authors conclude "Now that the Russians have apparently realized that their national interests lie in greater cooperation, and not confrontation, with the West, it is time to reach out to the Russians." I have some nitpicking problems with this breezy reasoning about what Russia realizes and doesn't realize, but Charap and Kuchins were certainly right about one thing: the Kremlin would very much like to play good cop for a while to ease the reputational damage caused by the ...