Mixed media: Fingers pointed at Putin

Security fears

RUSSIAN ON-LINE NEWSPAPER - Questions are mounting about whether Putin's policies - not only in Chechnya but also the power consolidation drive to stamp out opposition and public debate - are exacerbating the terrorist threat. Opposition politicians such as Grigory Yavlinsky and Irina Khakamada said in interviews this week that this was an increasingly dangerous trend ...

Some politicians and analysts are wondering about Putin's ability to ensure the nation's security. "The President was awarded a contract to restore order in Russia and ensure that Russia's people are safe. Today we see that this contract has been broken," Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the few remaining independent State Duma deputies, wrote in Nezavisimaya Gazeta this week.

Moscow Times

LEFT-WING WEBSITE - The Russian war President Vladimir Putin, who has pursued the violent course against Chechnya, saw fit to criticise Russia's security agencies for being caught unguarded. These words reveal a man who will assume only partial responsibility and deflect most of the blame elsewhere.

A further splitting of Russia would make expropriation and exploitation [by Western corporations] easier.

Putin understands this well but he has chosen a wrong-headed and iniquitous strategy to hold Russia together. Russia must pursue the path of peace and make conciliatory gestures to Chechens if it wants to seek a harmony.

Dissident Voice

JAPANESE NEWSPAPER - Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the siege in Beslan as "an inhuman terrorist crime without precedent". But he would not take personal responsibility for the rising death toll.

Putin's policy of refusing to cave in to terrorists is correct. But he should be flexible on such a policy depending on the situation. Was Russia prepared for such a terrorist act? How hard did the Russian Government strive to minimise the damage? The Russian Government must assess those questions.

Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo

DUTCH RADIO - He [Putin] is obviously weaker, he has displayed a lack of leadership in a very serious crisis situation, and - what is even worse here - he obviously doesn't know what to do next. What Mr Putin is talking about is more secret police control, more harassment of independent journalists, which is already happening. Journalists are, of course, much easier targets than real terrorists. And it would seem that Mr Putin is turning against them.

Radio Netherlands

Others to blame

FRENCH NEWSPAPER - "The end of maintaining Russia's [territorial] integrity does not justify the means of the dirty war in Chechnya." But "the spinelessness of Europe" towards Putin is also culpable. The European Union "with France and Germany at the head, keeps silent and embraces Putin instead of pointing to the blood staining his uniform". This is a "distressing and, in the long-run, dangerous attitude".

Liberation, Paris

BBC COMMENTATOR - The West has generally left Moscow to its own devices in Chechnya with occasional and ineffective mutterings about human rights.

This is despite a private view among some Western diplomats that Russia, having lost so much of the old Soviet Union, would not be affected by the loss of Chechnya.

The reality is that many western governments have their own war against terrorism to fight and do not want to jeopardise Russian co-operation by making adverse comments about Chechnya. It all adds up to a Putin policy of, for the moment, no change.

Paul Reynolds, BBC News Online world affairs correspondent

BRITISH NEWSPAPER - [Putin's] failure to end significant rebel military resistance after launching his political career on the back of an invasion of Chechnya is his Achilles heel.

So few inside Russia or outside will necessarily be taken in by his insistence that there is no link between his policies in Chechnya and events in Beslan.

That does not mean Mr Putin is wrong to say the aim of the raid was to destabilise the whole of the North Caucasus.

David Hearst in The Guardian

SCOTTISH BLOGGER - The Russians don't see themselves as the imperialists. They see themselves as the targets of imperialism.

One of the world's major nuclear powers, Russia is still posing a threat to someone, therefore this threat must be removed.

Ken Macleod