US relations, with the former Cold War adversaries trying to resolve conflicts ranging from Washington's plan for interceptor missiles in Europe to Russia's push for military bases in two separatist provinces of Georgia. Despite a new US administration and some soft words between Moscow and Washington in recent days, progress is likely to come slowly, if at all. At a weekend security conference in Munich, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, a noted Kremlin hawk, praised Washington as ready to “resume the Russian and US dialogue frankly and openly.” He commented after Vice President Joe Biden said that “it's time to press the reset button” on US-Russia relations. The sweet words come at a time of soured relations. Both sides are deeply divided over a number of issues, especially one – Russia's effort to use its military, diplomatic and economic muscle to re-establish its influence over former vassal states in Central Asia, the Caucasus, Ukraine and eastern Europe. This ambition, some analysts argue, helped trigger Russia's August invasion of Georgia, Moscow's cutoff of natural gas piped across Ukraine to Europe and what many see as the Kremlin's hand behind a move to evict a key US military base from Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. Andrew Kuchins, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, thinks there is a “reasonable possibility we can reverse the negative momentum in the US-Russia relationship.” Partly, that's because of the miserable state of that relationship. “We went about as low as we could go in the fall of 2008,” Kuchins said. The most difficult issue is likely to be how the US handles the Kremlin's campaign to reclaim its former sphere of influence. Biden rejected that effort in Munich on Saturday, a day after Moscow granted Kyrgyzstan more than $2.1 billion in loans and aid – and the former Soviet republic immediately announced it would evict the US from an airfield near Bishkek. The base supports US operations in Afghanistan. In another area, the Kremlin said Tuesday that Medvedev is “ready for thorough joint work” with Washington on nuclear disarmament, noting Obama's call for Washington and Moscow to “lead the way” in reducing the global nuclear threat. No matter the issue, several experts said, talks between US and Russia will be a hard slog.
