The Kremlin made sure this year was the year the world finally took notice of Russia. But there was a hitch: Much of the world didn't like what it saw.
In some ways, this year marked Russia's biggest breakthrough on the international stage since the trauma of the 1991 Soviet collapse.
As the world's energy king -- the leading natural gas producer and second oil producer after Saudi Arabia -- Moscow now has a guaranteed seat at the international economic table where until just a few years ago Russian finance ministers went cap in hand.
New diplomatic clout was on display in July when Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted world leaders from the powerful Group of Eight (G8) club in Saint Petersburg. Moscow paid off billions of dollars in foreign debt and took a boldly independent line on major international issues, including Iran.
"The most important thing we felt was that there was a significant increase of the Russian factor in international affairs," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in summary on Wednesday.
But if Russia is back, few in the West are laying out the welcome mat.
The influential Economist magazine recently portrayed Putin on its cover as a Chicago mobster -- aiming a petrol pump instead of a machine-gun.
"Don't mess with Russia," the headline reads, echoing warnings throughout the Western media, while influential US congressmen continue to push for Moscow to be excluded from the G8.
The ill feeling kicked off as early as January, when Russia's giant Gazprom cut off gas supplies to Ukraine in retaliation for the Western-leaning ex-Soviet republic refusing a more than fourfold price increase.
Moscow insisted the goal was to apply market principles to gas sales, but many in the West saw evidence not of a resurgent Russia, but an authoritarian country ready to bully smaller neighbors.
The image battle tipped the other way in July when the Kremlin, helped by top US public relations firm Ketchum, launched a G8 charm offensive.
But that diplomatic summer of love ended abruptly with a return to the kind of Russia that most associate with the wild 1990s.
In September, gunmen in Moscow assassinated the deputy head of the central bank. Then in October Anna Politkovskaya -- crusading journalist, human rights activist and Putin critic -- was shot dead outside her home in the capital.
Russia also became embroiled in a mismatched diplomatic fight with tiny Georgia, a pro-Western neighbor that claimed to have arrested four Russian spies and was slapped with an economic embargo in return.
Then came the real crunch: the radiation poisoning death in London last month of fugitive Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko.
In a dramatic, if so far totally unsubstantiated deathbed statement, Litvinenko pointed the finger directly at Putin, and this triggered an avalanche of reports about political repression in Russia and the resurrection of the KGB.
"The image of Russia is now in a deplorable state," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov conceded this week. "The mood definitely worries us, the mood of many Western media."
Peskov acknowledged that there had been "a series of contract killings" and other "objective problems" in Russia, but argued that these had been used by the media in an "aggressive anti-Russian campaign."
Lavrov dismissed much of the criticism as sour grapes at Russia's oil-fueled return to world power status.
According to Moscow Carnegie Center analyst Masha Lipman, Moscow's image problem is undermining the achievements on the economic and diplomatic fronts.
"There was a real increase of Russian influence in the world this year. Russia is holding an ever more independent position. Look at Iran, North Korea and Russia's competitiveness with the West over Central Asia," she said.
"At the same time, Russia's image has very seriously worsened [and] the worsening of this image is starting to harm Russia because there is no trust left."
Leaders throughout Europe and the US who largely befriended Putin are on their way out, she noted, and "the future leaders can be expected to be less patient."
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they