Russia reaping benefits as Kyrgyzstan changes hands _ regardless of who stoked the uprising

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Russia stands to reap benefits of Kyrgyz unrest

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — Russia has cast a long shadow in Central Asia, and it’s shaping up as a big winner after the deadly uprising in Kyrgyzstan, the only nation in the world where both the U.S. and Russia have military bases.

Although few concrete signs have emerged of a direct Russian role in the revolt, the caretaker leader isn’t hiding her appreciation of Moscow.

Russia was the first to recognize Roza Otunbayeva’s interim leadership, and she told The Associated Press on Friday that her top deputy was holding talks in Moscow on Russian government aid. Another deputy suggested Russia could send in peacekeepers if violence reignites.

The Kremlin clearly had been frustrated with the deposed Kyrgyz leader, who fled the capital this week after police fired at protesters in clashes that left dozens dead.

Kurmanbek Bakiyev renewed the lease on the Manas U.S. air base despite Russian objections and reportedly reneged on promises to give Russia control of a torpedo equipment plant and start a joint military training school. Bakiyev has refused to resign and is seeking support in his clan’s southern power base.

Spinning once more into Moscow’s orbit is not seen as such a grim prospect for many in impoverished Kyrgyzstan, where corruption is widespread and resentment of the West has grown.

“We want to be friends with Russia, and we hope that the Russians will help us,” said Toktun Abdumomunova, a 37-year-old bookkeeper in Bishkek. “We shouldn’t fight with Russia over the American base. We depend more on Russia.”

For Russia, a strong ally in Kyrgyzstan would be a new strategic triumph after the defeat of pro-Western forces in Ukraine’s elections earlier this year and Moscow’s victory over Georgia in a 2008 war. And it could boost Russia’s weight in regional power plays with the United States and China, Kyrgyzstan’s eastern neighbor.

“The changes in Kyrgyzstan are an unequivocal strengthening of Russia’s position not only in Kyrgyzstan but in all Central Asia,” said independent Kyrgyz analyst Mars Sariyev. “Russia has effectively received carte-blanche in Kyrgyzstan.”

A first test of the shifting balance will come when the new Kyrgyz leadership considers what to do with the Manas base, which halted flights to Afghanistan amid the unrest but resumed them Friday.

Opposition figures in the past have said they want the U.S. base shut down, but Otunbayeva told The AP in Bishkek on Friday: “We are keeping our commitments, which we have signed in international agreements.”

For all its bristling at the base, analysts say Russia may not really want it shut down.

“The American base is not against Russia,” said Alexei Malashenko of the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Even the Russian military understands it is the place where the cooperation between Russia and the United States is the most valuable.” Kyrgyzstan is the only nation where both Cold War foes have military bases.

If NATO fails to defeat the Taliban, that could have grave consequences for Moscow, from a flood of new drugs coming in to political instability around Russia’s southern flank.

“Russia is genuinely concerned about this as a regional security issue,” said Christopher Langton, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

He predicted a “bidding war” in which the new Kyrgyz leadership could demand higher U.S. rent for Manas, or other perks from Russia.

For impoverished Kyrgyzstan, turning down a lucrative offer from the United States “would be hard to justify given the genesis of this protest, which was based on some economic penalties imposed on the population,” Langton said, referring to energy price hikes that helped stoke public anger. On the other hand, he said, “the base is not popular with the Kyrgyz people.”

The United States installed its base early in the Afghanistan campaign in 2001 but has struggled to persuade the Kyrgyz of its benefit to them. Kyrgyz attitudes toward the United States soured after a U.S. Air Force serviceman shot and killed a Kyrgyz driver in 2006.

“The problem of the United States is a problem of communication,” said Didier Chaudet, a specialist in Central Asia and lecturer at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris.

Last year, Bakiyev said he would kick the Americans out — shortly after Russia agreed to grant Kyrgyzstan more than $2 billion in aid and loans. The Kyrgyz government later agreed to a revised one-year deal giving U.S. troops rights to use the facility, with a major rent hike.

Officially Moscow and Washington have denied any Russian role in stirring up Kyrgyzstan’s current discontent.

Signs emerged in the state-controlled Russian press in recent weeks that the official line in Moscow had turned against the Kyrgyz leadership.

Russian state-run radio station, Golos Rossiyi, or Voice of Russia, said the Kyrgyz government had “demonstrated complete ineffectiveness.” The Izvestia daily, owned by a government-controlled media holding, ran stories detailing the grievances of the opposition and exposing the weakened position of Bakiyev’s government.

After Otunbayeva took over, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called her “and asked if we need some help and I told him yes, we need some financial aid. One of our representatives went to Moscow yesterday and is in talks,” Otunbayeva told AP.

One of her interim deputy prime ministers, Omurbek Tekebayev, told the Web site Gazeta.ru on Friday, “In case of a conflict, the Russian military could be involved in restoring peace and preventing conflicts as peacekeepers.”

Russia has had on-again, off-again relations with Kyrgyzstan in the generation since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russian families then left Kyrgyzstan and neighboring countries in large numbers, and money from cash-strapped Moscow largely dried up. Under longtime President Askar Akayev, Kyrgyzstan was for years a darling of the West, viewed as the most open and democratic country in the region — but he gradually grew more authoritarian, and when he was forced out by opposition groups in the so-called Tulip Revolution of 2005, he went straight to Moscow.

Strains in Russian business and military cooperation with Kyrgyzstan also emerged under Bakiyev.

Russian business daily Kommersant reported Friday that Bakiyev reneged on a promise to Medvedev last year to give Russia a controlling share of a plant that produces equipment for Russia’s Shkval torpedoes.

Kommersant says Bakiyev also went back on a deal to create a military school with the Russians in southern Kyrgyzstan, seen as compensation for allowing the Americans to keep Manas. That school may emerge as another bargaining chip for Bishkek with Moscow and Washington in the months to come.

Charlton reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Deborah Seward in Paris and Lynn Berry in Moscow contributed to this report.