• As anti-US policies multiply, should next president treat Russia as friend or foe?

    Russia will be at the top of the foreign policy agenda for whoever is in the White House. Ordinary Russians give their view of the election to NBC News in Moscow.

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News

    News analysis

    LONDON -- One thing is clear: whether it's President Barack Obama or President Mitt Romney, dealing with Russia will be on his "must do" list.

    The "sleeping bear" has been pretty restless lately: it has vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions on Syria and blocked U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to end the civil war there; it has refused to pressure Tehran, even though it helped build Iran's nuclear enrichment program; and relentless push-back by Russian President Vladimir Putin against basing a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic – both former Soviet satellite states – has left those two NATO members exposed and nervous.

    Jason Reed / Reuters, file

    President Barack Obama shakes hands with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, on June 18. In the past six months, while supplying arms and support to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, Putin has shut down a U.S. government program inside Russia that dismantled its obsolete nuclear weapons, and restricted USAID's operations there.

    But figuring out what to do about Russia first means defining who exactly Russia is. Is it, as Romney submits, America's "number one geopolitical foe"? Or, as Obama seems to believe, is Russia a post-Cold War rival with whom we can do business?

    Let's step back a little here. Certainly, after the fall of the Soviet Union, relations with Russia under President Boris Yeltsin were more benign. Remember all the guffawing and back-slapping between Yeltsin and President Bill Clinton?

    Don Emmert / AFP - Getty Images, file

    President Bill Clinton laughs with Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin during a press conference on October 23, 1995.

    Unfortunately, all that good cheer soon turned into a humiliating debacle. Yeltsin was often intoxicated. He launched two disastrous wars in Chechnya, and became a laughingstock as his economy tanked and rich "oligarchs" divvied up the nation's wealth.

    Full coverage: NBCNews.com's The World is Watching series

    Then came Putin – the former KGB agent who heavy-handedly stopped the hemorrhaging. He re-established Kremlin control over oil and gas, and as oil prices tripled he pumped billions of petro-dollars into his military and, as importantly, into the salaries and pensions of Russian voters.

    'An equal'
    His popularity skyrocketed; and it was time for the West to take heed. At a Munich security conference in 2007, Putin threw down the gauntlet. He accused the United States – under President George W. Bush – of a murderous policy of global domination and said Russia had the weapons to "neutralize" any missile defense near its borders.

    Also in this series: Suspicion of US rife as Obama, Romney jab China

    It was not a declaration of war, but it was a turning point – from an America-friendly…to a confrontational Russia. "Russia was back," Fyodor Lukyanov, managing editor of Russia in Global Affairs, told me. "That was the message – we have the resources. You need the resources, and you need to treat Russia with respect. As an equal."

    And the chill began to thaw. Dmitry Medvedev succeeded Putin as Russian president and seemed more open and Western-minded than his mentor.

    President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney discuss foreign policy in the third and final presidential debate.

    He and his counterpart, Barack Obama, agreed to "reset" relations, hoping that the rebooting would clear all the static. Soon, both sides came together on transporting supplies for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan across Russian territory; cooperation in areas like counter-terrorism and narcotics interdiction increased; Medvedev even championed some political reforms that would have guaranteed the emergence of a real opposition. That is, until Putin retook the presidency last May. Since then, he's rolled back all the reforms, and seems to have "re-reset" U.S.-Russian relations to the days of the Cold War.

    Russia warns Obama's 'reset' in relations 'cannot last forever'

    Putin is turning the screws, and not just by dramatic moves, like imprisoning members of the female punk group, Pussy Riot, on charges of blasphemy for having performed an anti-Putin song in a Moscow church.

    Members of the band Pussy Riot, arrested in February after storming a Moscow cathedral, were sentenced to two years in jail Friday. Critics say the arrest was Putin's personal revenge, raising questions about justice in Russia. NBC's Duncan Golestani reports.

    "A pale of repression is settling over the country," wrote Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation in a recent New York Times editorial. "This crackdown is wrapped in legislative garb, but the iron grip of authoritarianism is unmistakable."

    New laws now slap pro-democracy protesters with large fines for "illegal assembly." One protest leader – Sergei Udaltsov, the head of the Left Front – has been charged with "plotting riots" and could spend 10 years in jail.

    Anti-Putin activists pay high price, but refuse to back down

    Others may follow – the courts have just expanded the meaning of "high treason" to include the sharing of information with any foreign non-governmental organization. In addition, NGOs which get funding from abroad must now register as "foreign agents," echoing the days of Cold War espionage.

    Also in this series: Despite bloodshed, Mexico is ignored during White House race

    And even as our presidential candidates debate whether Russia is a friend or enemy, there seems little doubt that Putin himself sees America as a looming geopolitical target. In the past six months alone, while supplying arms and support to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, Putin has shut down a U.S. government program inside Russia that dismantled its obsolete nuclear weapons; he's closed the UNICEF offices, and restricted USAID's operations there.

    Russia tells US: We don't' want your aid money

    As his anti-American policies multiply, it's small wonder that in a recent national poll, Russians were seriously divided on whether they loved America…or hated it (46 percent to 38 percent, respectively).

    Conservatives like Cohen are frustrated. While Putin turns Russia into a "fortress," they say, the Obama administration keeps offering up carrots, like gaining Russia access to the World Trade Organization.

    Vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan praised running-mate Mitt Romney's foreign policy stances at the last presidential debate, telling TODAY's Savannah Guthrie that the GOP candidate did a "fantastic" job of spelling out his doctrine.

    They claim the reset just hasn't worked.

    "America should pursue its national interests in relations with Moscow, instead of pursuing a feel-good mirage," Cohen wrote.

    'Putinization' spreading in Europe, US group warns

    President Romney says he would stand up to Russia and talk tough about human-rights abuses. But it's less clear just how a 2nd term Obama presidency would deal with Putin's Russia.

    Putin himself has said that he'd rather work with Obama than with the "misled" Romney. That's understandable – on Obama's watch, Putin has succeeded in cracking down on civic dissent at home and building the world's largest publicly-traded oil company – Rosneft.

    Russia's Putin: Romney 'mistaken,' Obama 'honest'

    Some Russia analysts are calling strategic energy reserves Putin's "new Red Army" – the Kremlin now controls some 25 percent of Europe's, including European NATO members', energy needs.

    But does all of that make Russia an enemy, like al-Qaida or Iran? Hardly. Still, it probably means that the next U.S. president is going to have to take off the gloves in dealing with it.

    "Putin's understanding of international affairs comes down to a fight for power and prestige," says Lukyanov.

    Also in this series: Israel, Iran name checks illustrate America's twin obsessions

    And Putin seems intent on using that power and prestige to counter U.S. influence around the globe, even as he turns Russia back into a police state.

    Vice President Joe Biden  reacts to President Obama's performance in the third and last debate, noting the president has demonstrated the "grasp and a gravity" of foreign policy.

    The columnist John Vinocur recently suggested that, if re-elected, Obama should "stand up with protesting Russians the next time they fill Moscow's streets."

    But how many protesters – and their leaders – will be languishing in jail by then?

    Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent based in London who has covered Russia and the former Soviet Union for more than 20 years.

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  • More weapons in Syria could trigger 'all-out war'

    Reuters

    Turkish soldiers take strategic position at the Akcakale border gate in southern Sanliurfa province on Sunday.

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News

    News Analysis

    SANLIURFA, Turkey – Monday was another day of cross-border violence and rising tension between Syria and Turkey.


    It was also a day when Gov. Mitt Romney pledged that, if elected president, he’d change the course of events here.

    Among other things, he wants to green-light heavy weapons to the Syrian rebels “who share our values” in order to “defeat the tanks, helicopters and fighter jets” of the Bashar Assad regime.

    For its part, the Obama administration says it has refrained from supplying the rebels with weapons out of concern that they could end up in terrorist hands. 

    Others say escalating the conflict with more weapons isn’t necessarily good news for ordinary Syrians who are struggling to live along the 600-mile border – or for the U.S., given the potential for a larger regional conflagration.

    Romney: Risk of conflict higher in Mideast after Obama policies

    On the border – but not safe
    Mahmoud Soukman is a truck driver who transports goods between Syria and Turkey. Three weeks ago he left his truck and fled with his wife, 9-month-old daughter and the clothes on their backs, moving in with his mother and siblings on a small farm just inside Turkey.

    But they don’t feel safe, on either side of the border.

    Mortars and shells explode ominously, and often in the distance, as Syrian rebels and government troops fight over strategic swaths of Northern Syria in the ongoing civil war. And one mortar did land near the farm house. 

    Meanwhile, the tit-for-tat border skirmishes between Turkey and Syria have already become routine. The Syrian Army landed a mortar again on Monday about 100 yards inside Turkey, with no casualties; and the Turks have been returning artillery fire at imprecise targets inside Syria.

    Andrea Mitchell talks to Ambassador Dennis Ross about the escalating tensions between Syria and Turkey, and what both presidential candidates are saying they'll do about the situation.

    Syrian President Assad’s regime offered a weak apology for the deaths of five Turkish civilians, killed last week by an allegedly errant shell. But Turkish government officials have become increasingly bellicose. On Monday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Turks to prepare for war, if necessary. 

    Also on Monday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said the "worst-case scenarios" were now playing out in Syria and Turkey would do everything necessary to protect itself.

    "The worst-case scenarios are taking place right now in Syria ... Our government is in constant consultation with the Turkish military. Whatever is needed is being done immediately as you see, and it will continue to be done," Gul said.

    "There will be a change, a transition sooner or later ... It is a must for the international community to take effective action before Syria turns into a bigger wreck and further blood is shed, that is our main wish," he told reporters in Ankara.

    Near Soukman’s farm, we saw Turkish troops and armored personnel carriers beefing up the border, building sand berms that gave the ordinarily bucolic setting a front-line feel.

    Turkey fires on Syria after another Syrian shell hits its terrority

    ‘Very volatile’
    Some Middle East analysts see a potential tinderbox. “The situation is very volatile, very dangerous and has the potential to escalate into all-out war,” warned Professor Fawaz Gerges from the London School of Economics. 

    What could happen if the rebels get the shoulder-held rocket launchers and anti-aircraft weapons they want?

    One likely scenario, say some Middle East experts, is that the Kremlin will loosen its own under-reported restrictions and sell the Syrian government – which Russia considers a client state – the high-tech weapons that Assad has been clamoring for. 

    If that were to happen, some say it has the potential to unleash an arms race – and an all-out war – on Turkey’s doorstep.

    In that case, Gerges believes, just one mistake, one miscalculation, could trigger a regional war - or worse.

    During a campaign speech at the Virginia Military Institute, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney outlined his plan for easing tension in the Middle East, as well as his Syria strategy.

    “If Turkey, a NATO member, is fed up and invades Syria, NATO would have no choice but to intervene in Syria. And you can bet that Iran would become involved, and this could quickly turn into a region-wide conflict between Turkey, NATO, Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the one hand, and Iran, Iraq, Hezbollah and Syria on the other.”

    Luckily, this nightmare scenario can be avoided. In fact, both Russia and NATO (read: the U.S.) are using their considerable influence over Syria and Turkey, respectively, to keep tempers in check.

    But Turkey is already bristling with almost 100,000 hungry Syrian refugees in camps on its border. And Assad is well aware that Turkey is largely spearheading the rebels’ fight against his regime, supplying their weapons and hosting the military wing of the opposition. 

    If a Syrian warplane were taken down by well-armed rebels and crashed into a Turkish village on the border, killing dozens, the incident could be the match that ignites a conflagration. 

    “You have the potential not only for a region-wide war, but also for international conflict as well,” said Gerges.

    Slideshow: Behind Syrian rebel lines

    Machine guns operated by motorcycle brakes? Get a glimpse at the rebels fighting against Assad's forces in Syria's mountainous Jabal al-Zawiya area.

    Launch slideshow

    Who are the Syrian rebels?

    Political calculation
    President Barack Obama has maintained that arming the rebels is a red line beyond which chaos could unfold, leaving the risk of an over-militarized Syria with a power vacuum – a kind of Libya on steroids.

    There is also the added danger of “rogue rebels” – both al-Qaida and affiliated militants have already joined the rebels’ ranks – getting their hands on sophisticated weapons and turning them on us.

    At least in his public statements, Romney doesn’t appear too concerned about either happening. Instead, he seems more focused on a victory by freedom-fighters over an evil Syrian regime. His camp says that more powerful and deadly weapons will be a game changer.  

    From his precarious perch overlooking the border, Soukman, the refugee truck-driver, sees only dark days ahead.

    “There’s no food or water in our village. You can die from hunger,” he said. “If the fighting doesn’t calm down, maybe we’ll be here for years.”

    Jim Maceda is an NBC News Correspondent based in London currently on assignment on the Turkish-Syrian border. Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • Analysis: 'Manufactured outrage' behind Middle East protests

    Slideshow: Anger over film spreads throughout Muslim world

    Akhtar Soomro / Reuters

    Protests ignited by a controversial film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad spread throughout Muslim world.

    Launch slideshow

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News

    News analysis

    Updated at 7:53 a.m. ET: CAIRO — It's been just over a week since hundreds, perhaps a thousand, angry and offended Egyptians gathered outside the U.S. Embassy's gates in Cairo. They carried Islamist banners and chanted, "The only God is God and Muhammad is his Prophet."

    At one point perhaps two dozen of the more brazen protesters scaled the wall and breached the embassy grounds. They lowered and destroyed the U.S. flag and raised a black, Islamic flag in its place. They fled when security guards (not the Egyptian police) fired warning shots over their heads.

    This amounted to little violence, but the act itself was the psychological equivalent of taking a beachhead. Within hours reports emerged that a similarly sized group had stormed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Some were calling it a copycat protest, but it was much more perilous: Four Americans were killed in the melee, including the U.S. ambassador.

    Within 48 hours the world would witness angry protests unfolding at U.S. embassies, businesses and symbols of power in more than 20 countries.

    Protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and pulled down the American flag during a protest over what they said was a film produced in the United States that insulted the Prophet Muhammad. NBC's Richard Engel reports.

    This paroxysm of protest — and violence — had begun in Cairo. But what, really, began there?

    Much of the mainstream media has played it as a spontaneous reaction to a disgusting film clip which denigrated Muslims and happened to be made and promoted in the USA.

    But New York Times editorialist Ross Douthat argued it had nothing to do with a "genuine popular backlash," but everything to do with old-style power politics. For Jim Clifton, chairman of the pollster Gallup, it wasn't about religion or politics, but rather the desperate expression of young Arab males, deeply humiliated because they couldn't find jobs.

    'Political manipulation'
    Egyptian analysts seem to be more in agreement: Many protesters outside the U.S. Embassy were genuinely offended by the film. But the real driving force behind the protest — in Cairo and Benghazi — were radical Islamist groups who know how to exploit rage for political gain.

    Actors and the assistant director of the film "Innocence of Muslims" told NBC News that the original spoken lines in the screenplay were dubbed over without their knowledge. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.

    "There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered," said Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian journalist. "For instance, why after two months of being on YouTube did this film suddenly explode on the anniversary of 9/11? That is political manipulation and manufactured outrage that the right wing is all too happy to use.''

    Egypt issues arrest warrants for Terry Jones, Coptic Christians over anti-Islam video

    By "right-wing" Eltahawy means ultra conservatives – often called Salafists – who practice a strict, puritanical form of Islam and make up the fastest-growing Islamic political and social movement in the world. On the night of the Cairo embassy attacks, the Salafists saw an opportunity to flex their muscles.

    "A lot of people went to the U.S. Embassy not just because of the film, and after the film died down, it wasn't about the film anymore," Eltahawy explained. "They went because of anti-U.S. sentiment, because they know in this region how easy it is to fan the flames of anger."

    French officials are preparing for a potential violent backlash as a satirical magazine defends its decision to publish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.

    Dr. Gamal Abdel Gawad, a highly respected Egyptian political analyst, agrees.

    "I don't think it was spontaneous," he told NBC News. "People were gathering in one place at a certain time of day, so there was some mobilization behind it.''

    Actress sues, says she was fooled into appearing in anti-Muslim movie

    And it's clear to Gawad who did the mobilizing. "Radical Salafist groups orchestrated it to express their views and embarrass the [more moderate] Muslim Brotherhood because of competition between Islamic groups."

    Post Arab-Spring power play
    What's enfolding in Egypt – and to a large extent in Libya — is not just a series of isolated power plays. In both countries the leaders who emerged from the Arab Spring are struggling to eke out a political center in order to govern their new democracies, while under extreme pressure from more radical Islamist — sometimes jihadist — forces. Everything is still at stake.

    This has led some Egyptians — like Eltahawy — to worry that their 18-month-old revolution will be hijacked by the extremists.
    "I'm hoping that this right-wing drive of the past days is the dying pangs of a group that understands that the revolution was started by us, the majority, and we remain very much the majority."

    Crowds of angry protesters showed up in Kabul, Afghanistan and Jakarta, Indonesia. The violent uprising followed a deadly weekend marking the deaths of eight International Security Assistance Force members. NBC's Atia Abawi reports.

    Gawad is more sanguine about the future. "The revolution is over. The president is in power, and Egyptian political parties are busy preparing for elections and campaigns. The radical groups can't get significant numbers elected," he said. Still, as dramatic scenes over the past week have shown, those groups — often armed — can wreak havoc.


    Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi seemed to give ground to the Salafists, even leaving the country at the height of a standoff between stone-throwing protesters and riot police for diplomatic meetings abroad.

    Finally, last Saturday, he gave the order to clear out the protesters and appeared on TV calling on Muslims to protect foreign citizens and property. Some called it a turning point.

    Now that a Paris-based satirical magazine has published cartoons of a naked Prophet Muhammad, will Egyptians respond with silent indignation, peaceful marches or be the first to storm their French Embassy?

    Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London and currently on assignment in Cairo. He has covered the Middle East since the 1970s.

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  • Syria-gate? WikiLeaks' latest drop of secret files

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News

    LONDON - It was another mega-download moment brought to you by WikiLeaks.

    On Thursday, at the progressive journalists hub in London called the Frontline Club, the group of whistleblowers officially announced the release of their latest massive “data set” regarding Syria. 

    The new release of some 2.5 million emails focuses entirely on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime as seen through the communications of its top ministries and companies. They date from August 2006 to March of this year, when the current crisis in Syria was building up deadly momentum. 

    This release by WikiLeaks is said to be so large that it allegedly surpasses by eight times the size of the group's infamous release of U.S. State Department cables known as “Cablegate."


    Are children fighting on Syria's rebel front lines?

    “The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria’s opponents,” WikiLeaks official Sarah Harrison said in a statement streamed live.

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who faces extradition to Sweden for questioning about allegations of rape and molestation, did not appear at the club because he is currently living inside Ecuador’s Embassy seeking political asylum. He fears he risks arrest by British police if he leaves the embassy building.

    A bomb targeting Syria's highest court has exploded in Damascus. NBC's Bill Neely reports.

    The so-called Syrian Files, to be released over the next few weeks, reportedly reveal intimate correspondence between top Baath Party officials, as well as records of bank transfers within Syria and abroad, including with Western companies, although Harrison did not go into detail.

    Numerous attempts to access the data online by NBC News failed because the WikiLeaks website crashed continuously. But several initial documents we could access refer to the international communications company Selex (based in Genoa, Italy) and the sale of its Tetra technology to Syria this year.  Tetra’s website describes the equipment as a “trunked radio system.” 

    WikiLeaks suggested this kind of encrypted communications network could be used, for instance, by the Syrian police to better protect their surveillance of militant activities. Harrison said that Western “training” on the Tetra technology inside Syria continued well after the outbreak of civil war.

    After losing his appeal against extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, says he is considering his next step, which could be an appeal to Britain's Supreme Court.

    Other downloads from the Syria Files that NBC News was able to access allegedly confirm delivery of  ‘3 complete sets of connectors for 3 choppers’ to Damascus.  It was unclear if “choppers” referred to helicopters used by the Syrian regime or jargon for a communications device. These Selex emails were dated Feb. 2, 2012.

    Syrian groups come to blows while seeking peace

    The goal of the latest release of data is to generate a series of in-depth stories about “the inner workings of the Syrian government and economy” and how the West and Western companies “say one thing and do another,” Harrison added.

    However, this release is striking in its broader, more neutral approach, without the trenchant ideology or politics associated with previous data sets.  

    From the front line in what looks ever more like a fight for Syria's capital Damascus, members of the Free Syrian Army appear to be closing in on President Assad's stronghold, at a terrible cost to both sides. NBC's Bill Neely reports.

    But on Thursday, Harrison denied reporters’ suggestions that WikiLeaks was going “mainstream.”  She said that the group was facing “a difficult time at the moment.” She was referring to WikiLeaks' growing grand jury investigation in the U.S. and the blocking of its accounts by international credit card companies – not to mention Assange’s diplomatic limbo – but said that the organization would continue to “work through that.” 

    Reporter behind the lines in Syria sees no end to war

    She ended by saying she was not aware of any “rebranding” by the world’s most controversial spiller of international secrets.

    Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent based in London. 

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  • Oh la la! A look at France's fascinating first ladies

    The current First Lady of France, Valerie Trierweiler, and the former, Carla Bruni, captivated the world. NBC's Jim Maceda reports.

    By NBC News

    New French President Francois Hollande and his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy have one thing in common that everybody is talking about: their glamorous significant others.

    NBC News' Jim Maceda reports from Paris.

    Related content:

    Caption: France's new president, Francois Hollande, was sworn in today just hours before traveling to Germany for a crucial meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel. The trip took an unexpected turn as Hollande's plane was forced to turn back after being struck by lightning en route to Berlin. ITV's James Mates reports.

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  • France's election battle moves from hearts to heads

    Alain Jocard / AFP - Getty Images, file

    Communist-backed hard leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who polls showed at one stage challenging far-right candidate Marine Le Pen for third place, finished the weekend's elections in fourth with 11.1 percent of the vote.

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News

    LONDON – My daughter Juliette is thirty-something, a former executive assistant to a top CEO, a mother of two and expecting her third child. Her husband, Nader, is a designer and engineer of energy systems. They are upwardly mobile, and they are both French, living in Paris.

    While they hardly see themselves as radicals, they did something Sunday that even surprised them: They voted for Jean-Luc Melenchon – the fiery former Trotskyist backed by the Communists – in the first round of the French presidential elections.

    I wasn’t too surprised. Both Juliette and Nader are articulate, independent adults who, like many French people, often vote with their hearts in the first round of balloting, and then with their heads, or wallets, in the key run-off two weeks later.

    But why Melenchon? Was this just a creative way to let off steam? A protest vote?

    "Well, it’s true, we were probably voting with our hormones this time around," Juliette admitted. "But people are so fed up with [President Nicolas] Sarkozy, it wasn’t like our votes weren’t well thought out.’"

    Kenzo Tribouillard / AFP - Getty Images

    France's incumbent president and Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) candidate Nicolas Sarkozy shakes hands with supporters as he leaves his party's campaign headquarters in Paris after a political committee on Monday.

    Waking up Monday morning, she and Nader were trying – much like the rest of the nation – to sort out their mixed feelings about what had happened.

    Sarkozy, Hollande advance in French vote; far right's Le Pen gets 20 percent

    Most of all, they said they were "shocked" by the record near-20 percent of the vote garnered by Marine Le Pen, the extreme-right National Front candidate who ran on a platform of cracking down on immigrants and beefing up France’s borders.

    Nader, a French-Arab whose parents immigrated to France from Tunisia and Yemen in the 1960s, is only too aware of the tinderbox such a policy would set off within the French Muslim community.

    At the same time, they were "pleased" that Socialist candidate Francois Hollande won the first round – with a modest 29 percent of the vote – and believe he’ll be the next French President.  They were also surprised Sarkozy did so well – less than 2 percent behind Hollande – and that "the trickster" might still find a way to pull a rabbit out of his hat.

    Benoit Tessier / Reuters

    Francois Hollande, Socialist Party candidate for the 2012 French presidential election, waves to supporters as he walks in the street during a campaign visit in Quimper on Monday.

    His most likely rabbit is an appeal to Le Pen’s right-wing constituents. On Monday, Sarkozy was out stumping, wooing Le Pen voters with a pledge to get tough on immigration and security. The irony that Sarkozy’s relatives immigrated from Hungary and Greece during the chaos of the early 20th century seemed to be lost on no one except Sarkozy himself.

    But Hollande’s political tap dance over the next two weeks may be even trickier than Sarkozy’s, as Hollande needs to win over not only French voters such as Juliette and Nader, who went for Melenchon in the first round, but also a significant number of "centrists," many of whom believe that Hollande is just window-dressing for France’s old diehard Communists.

    In other words, Hollande will have to prove to the left that he’s strong enough to defy Germany’s Prime Minister Angela Merkel and the other Eurozone rulers with promises of stimulating the French economy, but not alienate his center with too much talk of tax and spend.

    Impossible? That’s what Sarkozy’s camp – and many economists – are saying.

    Certainly, the international financial markets are worried about the prospect of a Hollande presidency on Monday. The euro fell 1 percent, U.K. blue chips dropped 2 percent, while the Dow-Jones industrial average plummeted more than150 points at the starting bell and was down all day.

    4-month presidential campaign with no television ads? Welcome to France

    But there’s no great belief, even among his supporters, that Sarkozy can bring anything new to the table to solve France’s two key problems: stalled growth and high unemployment.

    While he talks about austerity and reforms, he hasn’t had the courage to impose either on an electorate who still deeply believe that the French model of a government-subsidized "worker’s paradise" is the best on Earth, and mustn’t be tampered with.

    So forget about the polls. The real campaign has just begun. This French presidential election – like so many before it – is now shaping up to be a photo finish between the Left and the Right, and whose voodoo can bridge the two sides.

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  • Calm for now, Russia seems certain to boil over

    Denis Sinyakov / Reuters

    Opposition leader Vladimir Ryzhkov speaks during a protest demanding fair elections in central Moscow on March 5, 2012.

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News correspondent

    MOSCOW – Vladimir Ryzhkov’s body language said it all. 

    The veteran Russian opposition leader was up on stage during the first mass  protest after Vladimir Putin’s big presidential election win. And he looked like a man on auto-pilot as he introduced one speaker after another, half-heartedly peppering his remarks with calls for “taking power back” and “Russia without Putin.”

    A month earlier, Ryzhkov had seemed as energized as Jumpin’ Jack Flash as he barked down his microphone in minus-10 degree Fahrenheit weather and looked out on a sea of humanity chanting for a “New Russia.” But on this much warmer night in the modest Pushkin Square in central Moscow, Ryzhkov’s spirit seemed to freeze over as he gazed on a crowd a fraction of the size of the earlier one. Surrounded by phalanxes of riot police, the protest seemed much smaller than the police estimate of 14,000.

    “I’m optimistic and pessimistic,” he told me as the two-hour rally drew to a close.

    “If Putin blocks our protests, we will come back in the hundreds of thousands [to commit acts of] civil disobedience.”

    Did he think there would be violence? “Yes – I’m afraid there’s no other way,” he said, looking dejected.

    Level playing field
    This week has been a moment of truth for the mostly middle-class activists who say they want nothing more than what most of us in the West take for granted: a civil society and a level political playing field. The re-election of Putin came with many claims of election fraud from both domestic and foreign observers.

    Dmitry Astakhov / AFP - Getty Images

    Russia's outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev, right, and President-elect Vladimir Putin, left, attend a training session as they visit the luging sport center at the alpine ski resort in Krasnaya Polyana, some 30 miles from Sochi, the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, on Friday.

    Sergei Strokan, a foreign affairs writer for the popular Kommersant daily newspaper, seemed to put it best. “The big question for the Russian opposition is whether there is life after March 4.”

    As we sipped coffees in the up-market Moscow bistro where many say the protest movement was born, I asked Strokan what the protesters could possibly do next. After all, according to the final tally, Putin won almost 64 percent of the vote. Even factoring in all of the alleged cheating, he still would have garnered a majority of ballots.

    “Before they do anything truly effective,” Strokan replied, “they must first admit one simple fact: That Vladimir Putin still enjoys the support of the vast majority of Russians.”   

    Yevgeny Tinchenko, a 25-year-old, unemployed Russian from Siberia, summed up the reasons behind that support. I met him in Zagorsk, about 50 miles outside of Moscow, where he was looking for a job in a traditionally pro-Putin religious center.

    “Putin inspires trust as a person,” Tinchenko told me. “I simply like him. When I see him on TV I think things will improve if he is running the country.” But Tinchenko went on to say that he only saw Putin on state-run TV, and knew next to nothing about the other candidates.

    There no doubt Putin used all of the ideological and propaganda weapons at his disposal to exploit those feelings  and win big, in the first round of the vote. Now he needs to fulfill the almost $170 billion in campaign promises he made over the past month – from pay raises for school teachers to more housing for war veterans. 

    With Vladimir Putin officially back in the driver's seat, what's next for the Kremlin, the protesters, and Russia's divided society? NBC's Jim Maceda reports from Moscow.

    Putin power plays
    Meanwhile, from his renewed position of strength, Putin is doing everything he can to diminish the opposition’s authority, in part by proffering a whole tree of olive branches.

    For instance, the Kremlin called on Russia’s chief prosecutor to review the charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil oligarch and Putin arch-enemy, imprisoned since 2003 because he dared challenge Putin’s authority. This is seen as a sign they may be softened or dropped. 

    It’s an example of how, firmly back in the driver’s seat, Putin can maneuver in a chess game he arguably plays better than anyone (except, perhaps, former world champion – and opposition leader – Gary Kasparov).

    In another deft Putin move, he reached out to a rival candidate, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, after the latter said the election results were “unfair.” Putin called Prokhorov and asked him if he’d accept a cabinet post in the new government. (It’s unlikely, though, that Prokhorov, who came in a strong third in the election, will accept the offer.)

    The moves underscore Putin’s clever attempt to peel away the center of the protest movement.

    ‘Two Russias’
    But, unfortunately for Putin, this opposition goes much deeper than a clutch of hard-core extremists. It’s a whole emerging Russian middle-class – millions of people with money and property – but no voice. 

    Mikhail Metzel / AP

    Russian police officers block a street near the site of a protest in downtown Moscow, Russia on Monday.

    “We are on the verge of losing stability for the single reason that society has already split,” said Strokan. “The crack is growing wider and wider, and what we see now is not one Russia, but two Russias. And neither listens to the other.”

    Kremlin watchers like Strokan worry about a collision course that Putin and the protesters seem to be headed on. The president-elect can crack down on what he sees as a minority of U.S. stooges, but he doesn’t have any ideas about how to reconcile the two sides.

    The protesters, meanwhile, know what they don’t want – and that’s another six years of Putin. But they, too, lack any effective strategy to pressure Putin to either reform the system, or step down.

    It’s all shaping up into a perfect storm of long-term trouble for Russia. And that’s terrible news for America and the world.

    Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London who has covered Russia and the former Soviet Union extensively.

  • Michael McFaul, a laid-back Yankee in trouble in Putin's court

    Michael McFaul, the new U.S. ambassador to Moscow, is one of the world's leading experts on Russia and has already become a lightning rod for Kremlin suspicions that he's come to foment revolt. NBC's Jim Maceda speaks to him about his new posting.

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News correspondent

     

    At first glance, Michael McFaul seems an odd fit for the post of U.S. ambassador to Russia. Pushing 50, McFaul, a political scientist and tenured professor at Stanford University, has spent almost all his career in the halls of academia, not in diplomacy.

    And he hardly looks like a threat; on the contrary, he’s engaging and jovial, combining a plain-speaking folksiness with a laid-back attitude he must get from his Montana and California background. Yet Professor, now Ambassador, McFaul has hit the Russian tarmac with all the force of a howitzer shell.

    Just two days on the job (he arrived in mid-January) and he’d become headline news on Russia’s Kremlin-controlled Channel 1, which ran a story about a string of Russian opposition leaders lining up outside his new residence at Spaso House that day, suggesting they were coming to get their instructions from the man who once wrote "Russia’s Unfinished Revolution."

    The Russian reporter’s suggestion was that McFaul, a fluent Russian speaker, had come back to finish business.

    A red flag of anger suddenly waved defiantly across the national media. McFaul hadn’t yet found his work-out gear in his boxes and he was already being compared to those evil ambassadors of yore, conniving in the shadows to topple the host regime.

    Siberia-style cold shoulder
    But McFaul has taken the Siberia-style cold shoulder in stride. In fact, he says, he was only at that meeting for protocol.

    Both Russian government and opposition leaders had come to see the visiting Deputy Secretary of State, William Burns, not him.

    And he points out the Russian media never mentioned the rest of his second day on the job.

    Cars with ribbons, balloons circle Moscow to protest Putin

    "I had some very warm, cordial and substantive meetings with people like the Foreign Minister, Prime Minister [Vladimir] Putin’s foreign policy adviser, President [Dmitry] Medvedev’s foreign policy adviser, so when I read that it was unwelcome – well, we didn’t have the camera crews out for those so I guess that’s the problem, right?" he says.

    The real problem, of course, is that, with presidential elections in March, McFaul’s past advocacy for a more democratic Russia has become easy prey for the Kremlin propaganda machine.

    Tens of thousands of Russians defy cold to demand fair elections

    In the same vapor breath, thousands of pro-Putin protesters who braved sub-zero Moscow temperatures in early February could be heard chanting "No Orange" (referring to the 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution in Ukraine) and "No U.S. Embassy!" 

    But, typically, McFaul is brushing off his rude welcome. In a veiled apology, he says he’s learning from his mistakes (while not naming any).

    Anti-Putin protesters: Coping with bitter cold and big questions

    'Invigorating!'
    And he’s raring to go. "If you stop learning, to me as an academic that’s the most insulting thing you can say about anybody.’’

    How does he sum up his first month as Ambassador? "Invigorating!"

    And McFaul is already making his presence felt in other ways. He’s checking official records, but believes he’s the first resident of Spaso House to set up a Nerf Basketball hoop in one of the giant reception rooms.

    US finds democracy a tougher sell abroad

    He thinks he’s also the first to play badminton in the salon. McFaul is confident the chilly "first impression" will change.

    "We’ll find our way and I think also Russia and our Russian guests will find their way in dealing with a different kind of group at Spaso House," he says.

    And if it doesn’t get any better, Ambassador McFaul can always resort to his two secret weapons: basketball and badminton diplomacy.

    More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

  • Anti-Putin protesters: Coping with bitter cold and big questions

    Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP - Getty Images

    Two of the organisers of the upcoming opposition rally "For Fair Elections," anti-Kremlin blogger Alexei Navalny (R) and former chess champion Garry Kasparov (L), speak as they attend a meeting of the rally organisers in Moscow, on Jan. 31, 2012.

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News correspondent

    MOSCOW – By any standard, it was an impressive array of individuals. Seated under a large poster of a young Andrei Sakharov – the Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, 1975 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and spiritual father of their movement – the brain trust of Moscow's anti-Putin opposition sat at card tables debating their next move.  

    The group was putting the finishing touches on the plan for this Saturday's protest – an hour march through central Moscow and a short rally across the Moskva River from the Kremlin. It will be the third mass opposition demonstration in Moscow since the December 4 parliamentary polls that were widely criticized for voter fraud in favor of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party.  

    Six weeks ago, more than 100,000 protesters took to the streets to vent their anger with the corruption and stagnation of the Putin regime. But since then, the end-of-year Russian holidays, followed by a Siberian cold snap with record-breaking temperatures, has undeniably sapped the protest movement's energy. The organizers collective fatigue was palpable.

    Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion, led the meeting. Not because he's so smart he almost beat a super computer at chess, but because his countless arrests and beatings at the hands of Russian riot police had earned him the mantle. Seated beside him were the two young stars of the new generation of Russian dissidents, the right-of-center blogger Alexei Navalny and socialist activist Sergei Udaltsov. 

    Str / AFP - Getty Images

    Opposition activists hang their banner reading: "Putin, go!" atop a bulding's roof, just over the Moskva River river from the Kremlin (foreground) in Moscow, on Feb. 1.

    Both men, in their 30's, had recently spent weeks in jail on charges of organizing illegal protests. Now they were subdued, speaking occasionally, but more often just listening, scrolling through their iPhone messages or tweeting.

    Opposite Kasparov, sat Vladimir Ryzhkov.  He too had paid his dues. Once the youngest MP elected to Boris Yeltsin's parliament at age 27, Ryzhkov, broad-minded and articulate, was seen rather differently by Putin's Kremlin. The “dangerous” reformer has effectively been ostracized from mainstream politics. 

    “No doubt the Russian Winter is not as inviting as the Arab Spring,” Kasparov quipped. “But I would say that 30, 40 or 50,000 in this weather will send a message across the river to the Kremlin.''

    But what message will that be? Putin's propaganda machine will likely jump on any smaller turn-out, proving, they will no doubt say, that the protest is petering out.

    By the end of their two hour meeting the protest organizers were clearly divided over what to do next to regain some momentum.

    Navalny argued that the mass protests of December needed to grow bigger and more frequent to pressure the Kremlin. But author Boris Akunin argued that the days of the big protests were over. They were too costly, too time-consuming, and had already peaked. It was time, he said, to focus on smaller, flash mob-generated actions.

    Misha Japaridze / AP

    Russian opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov shows a V sign after he was released from a detention center in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2012. Udaltsov, whose jailing became a rallying point for the Russian opposition, has been freed after a month in custody.

    Indeed, across Moscow, such “attacks” are growing in number. On any given day, small groups of protesters walk out of the city's many subway stations, their mouths covered with strips of masking tape, on which is written “We Have No Voice.” They're arrested almost as soon as they walk into the street. They also have tried cyber-attacks on the Kremlin's Internet. Within hours of the launch of Putin's own website, it was jammed by thousands of emails calling on him to resign.

    And in arguably the most startling “protest,” several activists managed to hang a giant banner on the top of a building directly opposite the Kremlin for all to see. Painted on the banner, both Putin’s likeness covered by a huge “X,” and beneath it, the words, “Go Away!” in Russian. Amazingly it took an hour for the police to spot it and tear it down. But, while often hilarious, none of these flash mob tactics are likely to keep Putin from winning a six-year term in the March 4 presidential elections.

    Kremlin's photo-doctoring backfires big time

    Putin himself seems to have come to that conclusion. Creating massive traffic jams in central Moscow today as his convoy skidded over the icy snow from one campaign stop to another, he's got his swagger back. His camp believes the protest movement is too divided to coalesce around one opposition candidate. And, besides, the other official candidates – Communist Gennady Zyuganov, Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Social Democrat Sergei Mironov and billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets Mikhail Prokhorov – are all Kremlin-approved because they pose no real threat.

    Andrey Smirnov / AFP - Getty Images

    A police officer braves the cold as he detains a demonstrator wearing a carnival costume of death who tried to take part in an unauthorized stage protest just outside the Interior Ministry headquarters in Moscow on Friday. The sign on the protester's chest says "Corruption."

    So what happens to the movement if Putin wins? Ryzhkov painted a dark picture: “There will be mass protests starting March 5th,” he said in his Moscow home and office following the meeting. “And then we stay in the streets until reforms start and Putin promises new legislative and presidential elections.”
     
    “You mean Tent Cities,” I asked?

    “Yes,” he replied. “Like the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.”

    And what if Putin doesn't reform, but instead cracks down?

    “Unfortunately Putin is a dangerous man. He can start some violence like [Syria’s] Bashar al-Assad or [Libya’s] Moammar Ghadafi. But I hope that if he sees a half million people in the streets, he will start reforms instead of violence.”

    Many middle-class, well-educated Russians are calling the protests a turning point. But is it the beginning of the end of Putin's political career? Or rather the beginning of an unprecedented second 12-year run of power for the only real leader Russians have known this century?

    The answer is blowing in a bone-chilling, Siberian wind.

    Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London who has covered Russia and the former Soviet Union since the 1980's.

  • Kremlin's photo-doctoring backfires big time

    Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP - Getty Images

    Anti-Kremlin blogger Alexei Navalny speaks during a rally against the December 4 parliament elections in Moscow, on Dec. 24, 2011. Tens of thousands of people filled an avenue in Moscow to protest against the alleged rigging of parliamentary polls in a new challenge to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin's authority.

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News correspondent

    LONDON – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and those who work for him, seem determined to turn a relatively unknown, 30-something protester into a larger-than-life political rival.

    It all began on a cold, December 4 afternoon, when Alexei Navalny stood up among a small crowd in Moscow and blasted Putin's United Russia party as one of “crooks and thieves” who had just stolen the parliamentary elections. The Kremlin put him in jail for two weeks. The tactic was obvious: keeping Navalny locked up would hinder his ability to organize a massive anti-Putin demonstration on December 24.

    Instead, the move backfired and ended up boosting Navalny's profile – and street cred – at a time when the splintered opposition was hungry for a new leader.

    By Dec. 24 he was out of prison and had become the face of the opposition. His rant in the bitter cold that day inspired more than 100,000 people in the street to “take back the election – by force if necessary” from those who had stolen it.
     
    But catapulting Navalny into instant celebrity wasn't good enough for the over-anxious Kremlinites. Now they've made him the face of their own absurdity as well. 

     

    Open up last Saturday's edition of Arguments & Facts, a popular national daily, and you'll find a photo of a beaming Navalny standing next to Putin's arch enemy, the oligarch-in-exile Boris Berezovsky, himself sporting a Cheshire cat smile.

    theguardian.com

    A screen grab from the Guardian shows the original photo of Alexei Navalny with Prokhorov on the top left, the doctored one with Berezovsky and some other fakes that have been circulated online.

    The caption reads: “Navalny has never hidden that Boris Berezovsky gives him money for the struggle with Putin.”

    Well, it took Navalny and his corral of fellow bloggers a few nano-seconds to work out that the photo had been doctored.

    In the actual photo, Navalny is standing next to another, Putin-friendly oligarch, Mikhail Prokhorov, the owner of the New Jersey Nets and a candidate for Russia's presidency.

    But standing next to Prokhorov is seen as benign because he's neither considered an agitator nor a serious threat to the Kremlin.

    Instead of just pointing out the fakery, Navalny’s supporters took things to the next level – by beaming photos across the blogosphere of him standing next to the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a space alien, Putin and other action men.

    Rich history of air-brushing
    The air-brushing of photos for propaganda reasons is an old Soviet art. Joseph Stalin routinely had  friends and allies erased from photos taken with him when they became his enemies (often after he’d had them killed, as in the famous case of Nikolai Yezhov, the leader of the NKVD, precursor of the KGB, in the 1920s.) 

    My personal faking favorite is the iconic shot of several Soviet soldiers holding up the hammer-sickle-flag above the German Reichstag building, marking the effective end of the war in Europe in 1945. If you look closely you'll see that the soldier supporting the flag-bearer is wearing a watch on his left arm. In the original, however, he has watches on both arms – suggesting that he might have looted them. The Russian magazine Ogonok removed the second watch just before publication.
     
    Of course, the practice is not restricted to Russia. Ever since photographs became a means by which world leaders defined themselves to their public, photos of Hitler, Mussolini, Mao Tse-tung, and going back in time, Grant, Sherman and, yes, even Abraham Lincoln, were doctored in order to enhance their image.   .
     
    But seldom has a manipulated photo backfired with the same concussive effect that Navalny's has.

    Staff / Reuters

    Activists of the pro-Kremlin youth group "Nashi" gather to protest against the activity of Russian blogger, political and social activist Alexei Navalny with a fake placard of him in central Moscow Dec. 26, 2011.

    One can even imagine the taciturn Putin, an ex-KGB agent, letting out an unforced guffaw as he scans Navalny's blog and finds the latest “photo-toad” (an English translation of the Russian slang for a doctored photo) of Navalny standing next to Bender, the robot from the comic strip Futurama.

    Putin's camp had no doubt hoped to turn Navalny into an enemy of Russia's people. Instead, the Kremlin itself has become a lightning rod for Russians' scorn and mockery, and Navalny has seen himself launched into the stratosphere of a Marvel Comics hero, without even having to lift a megaphone.

    In the lead-up to the March presidential election, Putin – still considered a shoo-in to win it all – may yet turn out to be his own worst propagandist.

    Jim Maceda is an NBC news correspondent based in London who has covered Russia and the Soviet Union since the 1980s.

  • What's next for Russian protests?

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News

                                             

    MOSCOW -- Saturday's protest was doubly impressive in that so many could have made excuses not to show. It was snowing, it was bone-chillingly cold, and it was the beginning of the Russian holiday season. Anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 people, by my guess, filled up Avenue Prof. (Andrei) Sakharov (the USSR's once infamous dissident) in Moscow and it must have signaled to the Kremlin "observers," hiding behind tinted glass in four-wheel drive vehicles beyond the police barriers, that the unprecedented protest two weeks earlier had been no fluke.

    But where does it go from here? Will this protest movement -- marked so far by restraint, humor and non-violence -- turn a Russian winter into a "Russian Spring"?

    There are already ominous signs.

    Alexander Aleshkin / Getty Images

    Demonstrators take part in a mass anti-Putin rally on Saturday in Moscow.

    Alexei Navalny, a passionate orator who until recently was known only to social networkers as an anti-corruption blogger, is quickly emerging as the new face of the anti-Vladimir Putin opposition. He roused the crowd on Saturday, declaring that if the movement weren't peaceful it could easily have taken over the Kremlin with the Russian crowd at hand. But, he warned, that could change if Putin connived to steal the NEXT presidential election, in March. "If these crooks and thieves go on cheating us, if they continue telling lies and stealing from us, we will take what belongs to us with our own hands.''

    This wasn't just crowd-pleasing rhetoric coming from an aspiring leader. Many protesters, like 30-year-old Vasily Gnuchev, a normally quiet, self-employed architect, see red when faced with the possibility, even likelihood, that Prime Minster Vladimir Putin will not only win the presidency but rule for yet another two six-year terms.

    "It's absolutely unacceptable that the man who's in power [already] for 12 years will be here for 12 years more!," Vasily spurted out in a rented apartment in dire need of repairs, literally red with anger. "We don't want another revolution, or bloodshed, but if Putin is going to win then there may be a "Russian Spring -- not an Arab Spring but a Russian one."

    Putin, after the initial shock of barely scraping by in the parliamentary elections of Dec. 4, said nothing about the protests for a week,  then treated them with contempt. He finally realized he had to engage, and (through the usual conduit of Russian President cum Putin spokesman Dmitri Medvedev) announced on Thursday a set of positive political reforms, none of which would take effect until the next cycle, in six years.

    Which makes Vasily see red ... again. ''We don't have six years to wait. And we know what will come of it in six years. It will be blah- blah-blah and nothing else!'

    Some of my Russian analyst friends in Moscow are quick to point out that Russia is not the Middle East. That the Arab Spring happened to dictatorships based on violence and repression. And that Russia -- with all of its abuses -- is still an open society with a market economy and that the "Freedom Genie" can never be put back into the bottle.

    Fyodor Lukyanov is one of President Medvedev's advisers on human rights who took the courageous step this week of calling for the annulment and repeat of the Dec. 4  parliamentary elections. He believes the only way Putin can win back his popularity is by running a squeaky clean and transparent campaign for president.

    "Putin may go to a second round -- that's OK,  he can still beat any of the contenders in the second round,'' says Lukyanov. ''And he will have his legitimacy back -- maybe not in the amount he had 10 years ago, but a big part of the population believes that Putin is much better than anybody else.''

    For many protesters, the animosity goes way beyond Putin the candidate. Vasily's father, Fyodor, now 50, says he watched in shock as the Soviet Union fell 20 years ago, then in horror as Russia passed, rudderless, through a decade of economic collapse and war. And then came Putin. Stability. Prosperity. "All over the country there was a scream of joy when we got rid of this alcoholic, Yeltsin. We finally saw a man who was sane, who was physically fit, and he wasn't reading from his notes," recalled the older Gnuchev.

    His son Vasily says he was too young to remember the bad old days of democratic Russia. But he prospered under Putin, and always felt free. And that's the real problem. The Putin regime's reportedly widespread electoral fraud pulled the rug from under a whole generation who believed in their leader, who believed in Putinism. "Now we see that everything is a lie," Vasily explained. "The Kremlin just stole our votes  -- it's just incompatible with the picture of the world we grew up in."

    It's that humiliation -- indeed, violation -- mixed with anger that seems to drive many Russian, middle-class protesters into the streets -- even when the elements are conspiring against them -- and will keep the pressure on Putin, with promises of more protests to come. But what if this "people power" movement really blossoms, only to be thwarted yet again, not in a free and fair election come March, but by another brazen, Putin-led ploy to retain power?

    Lukyanov admits he's "cautiously pessimistic." "Unfortunately," he told me, "Russian and Soviet and pre-Soviet history shows us that those in power are capable of making almost any mistakes and stupidities."

    On the one hand,  "Russian people" determined to take back the country they feel they've lost, and on the other,  "Russian power" equally determined to hold onto it. What's next? "It's absolutely impossible to predict the course of events in 2012," offered Lukyanov.

    Whatever happens, those two driving forces of 2012 look to be on a collision course.

    Jim Maceda is an NBC News correspondent based in London who has covered the Soviet Union and Russia since the 1980s.

    More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

  • Despite 'Don't Ask' repeal, some gays still don't tell

    By Jim Maceda, NBC News correspondent

    PUL-E-ALAM, Logar Province, Afghanistan – Exactly one year since the ban on gays serving openly in the military was lifted, here’s a different way of gauging how the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is playing out: How good is the media access to gay soldiers? 

    The short answer: It’s still a work in progress.

    Ultimately, we got our story for NBC’s Nightly News. We spoke with a dozen or more gay or lesbian soldiers and airmen – both on relatively safe rear guard bases, but also on the front lines.

    That wouldn’t have happened without the approval of military commanders and the cooperation of our “minders” – the Public Affairs Officers who were our liaisons to a gay community which, only months ago, still had to socialize covertly.

    But it was an uphill, two-week battle, full of last minute changes and disappointments. And while in the end the military let us tell the story, we often felt, along the way, that some commanders simply didn’t want us snooping around such a sensitive issue for fear of opening a massive can of worms.

    Reconciling ‘two lives’
    For instance, the sudden cold feet of a young, gay combat engineer – who did not want to be named, based in eastern Afghanistan. Even though he had told his story to the national media before, he had never been publicly identified, and he canceled our interview just as we were to chopper out to meet him.

    It turned out, like many gay soldiers, he had lived two separate lives. In this soldier's case, his private, gay life and his “normal” life with a wife and child back home. He had never “come out” to his wife or family.

    But he faced an even bigger problem: By admitting to a gay relationship while married, he would also violate U.S. military laws against adultery, which can result in a dishonorable discharge. It made me realize how complicated the coming-out process can be for gay and lesbian service members.

    As a Plan B, I made a quick call to see if we could set up a military embed on a large base in northern Afghanistan. Could we spend a couple of days with U.S. soldiers over Thanksgiving and get their story out to loved ones and our viewers? I asked. 

    “That shouldn’t be a problem, Jim,” was the answer from the very can-do Public Affairs Officer I spoke with. 

    “Good,” I replied. “And while I’m up there I’d also like to ask some soldiers a few questions about how the lifting of the ban on openly gay service members is going in their units.” 

    After a long pause, I heard: “I don’t think I’ll mention that to the boss.”

    “Fine,” I said. “It was just a thought.”

    A few hours later the same PAO left a text message: “Request not granted – sorry, Jim. The boss thinks it’s too unsafe up here right now.”

    Photo Blog: Two women share first kiss at US Navy ship's return

    Slow ripple effect
    There were other setbacks, usually a result of that gap “between two lives” – straight and gay, civilian and military. Many gay soldiers still choose NOT to tell their story rather than be caught in the collision. 

    It’s only been three months since the repeal took effect in the field, and the ripple from that change still has a long way to travel, despite the real freedom from the fear of being discharged from the military that all gay soldiers we spoke with now enjoy.

    One example, the same military policeman who had no problem showing his face on-camera during a gay “coffee hour” at Bagram Air Field, canceled a more personal one-on-one interview the next day near his work station. An articulate soldier with a macho swagger, the MP apologized for the change of heart. But he hadn’t yet come out with some of his colleagues and wasn’t yet ready to do so.

    A year ago the U.S. military was almost evenly divided over the lifting of DADT during war time. But we saw huge strides forward in retraining soldiers to deal with a new reality: Gays always served with honor during war and made their country proud, only now they’re able to do so without having to hide or lie.

    Still, old habits die hard.

    After conversing with gay male and female service members – many of them officers – at one of the “coffee hours,” our PAO was driving us back to our sleeping quarters when an overhead light caught the condensation on our front windshield and one word, written hastily by someone’s finger, appeared for all of us to see.

    “Fags.”

    “Idiots!” belted out our PAO, excoriating his own comrades.

    And I thought to myself, “Now that’s the reality check.” 

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