The RF president Vladimir Putin appointed Dmitry Rogozin as Russia's permanent representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels. Thus Rogozin replaced Constantine Totsky at this post.
NATO agreed to this appointement. NATO has accepted this appointment. The "official note of consent" to Rogozin's appointment has been received, reports Interfax referring to sources at Russia's Permanent Representation to the NATO.
First information about the appointment of Rogozin, being recently a political outsider, to the post of Russia’s permanent representative to NATO appeared in the end of October 2007. Shortly the State Duma and then the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council approved this appointment. The leader of the United Russia, the speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov supported the candidacy of Rogozin, whom he had named a ‘crude nationalist’ in 2004. Rogozin confirmed this name in 2005. During the campaign before the elections in the Moscow Municipal Duma his party Rodina (lit. Motherland) showed an offensive agitation clip, which demonstrated Caucasians who didn’t let live Russian people. Now the situation has changed. ‘Personally I support the candidacy of Rogozin’, said Gryzlov during the voting in the State Duma.
Rogozin himself doesn’t regard his departure for Brussels as a political exile. He is sure that he will manage the new job. ‘I know many foreign languages including the language of decent statements which nevertheless doesn’t conceal the tough sense of the contents‘, stated he after the voting in the State Duma.
The very North Atlantic Alliance neither objected. The NATO spokesman James Appathurai stated that they were ready to work with the new permanent representative of Russia.
Many observers understood the appointment of such an ambiguous political figure to this post in Brussels. There ‘diplomatic’ skills of Rogozin can become more popular. At the moment the main foreign-policy speaker on Russian television is Constantine Kosachev, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Parliament. Kosachev is an experienced diplomat. He is not able to express aspirations of the majority of Russians so biting and vividly. Thus, Rogozin can become a popular television product for home consumption, whereas negotiations with NATO from the point of view of a real approximation of positions are quite unpromising.
The political career of Dmitry Rogozin was not easy. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1986 with a degree in journalism; hanged out in organizations close to the Komsomol, but made neither money nor political reputation. He became famous when in the 90s he headed de facto the Congress of Russian Communities. In the three of the party during the elections in 1995 entered a super popular politician Alexander Lebed, who later signed a piece treaty with Chechnya.
The image of an ardent fighter for rights of Russian-speaking minorities all over the post-Soviet space has brought to Rogozin some profits. In the early 2000s he was already a representative of the Russian parliament in PACE. In disturbing moments, when the Russian government had some foreign-policy problems, Rogozin was always on the TV. One talked of his inevitable entry into United Russia.
But he decided to take another project – Rodina. The block was created right before the elections 2003. Kremlin supervised the project, which joined patriots, radicals and nationalists of every stripe. The block acted as a spoiler designed for drawing off national and patriotic electorate from the KPRF. It positioned itself on the critic of the so-called oligarchs. Rogozin named his party ‘a special mission unit of the president’.
Thanks to the arrest of Khodorkovsky this topic became extremely urgent so Rodina gathered 9% of votes and entered the State Duma. But the financing of the party of Rogozin-Glasyev-Baburin (leaders of Rodina) stopped and soon the party became splitting into parts. The project was over in 2005-2006 when Kremlin demonstrated an obvious displeasure with Rogozin and became to remove the party from almost all regional elections. Rogozin was backed away from the managing of the party and then Rodina was joined a new left project of Kremlin - Fair Russia. The consolidation happened already without Rogozin, but Kremlin doesn’t forget talents.
