MOSCOW — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell faced a barrage of questions during his visit to Russia this week, but few were more pointed than the one from a woman named Kristina who submitted an e-mail query during Powell's interview with the radio station Echo of Moscow.
"Saddam Hussein's obvious terror was stopped only through an intervention of other countries, mainly the USA. Now Moscow is destroying Chechnya with tacit approval from the international community," she wrote. What, she wanted to know, was America going to do about it?
For a partial answer, Kristina might have opened the previous morning's Izvestia newspaper, where in a front-page essay Powell not only raised the issue of Russia's human rights record in the breakaway republic of Chechnya but also gently prodded the administration of President Vladimir V. Putin on media freedom, fair elections and the recent arrest of the nation's richest businessman, Yukos Oil's former chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Powell also raised all four issues with Putin, signaling the Bush administration's first move to exert pressure on the Kremlin to check what many see as a worrisome authoritarian trend that began with the election of Putin, a former KGB colonel, in 2000.
The tone was noncombative: Powell left it to Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov to broach the topics in the meeting with Putin. Afterward, Powell called his message quiet advice between "friends," aimed -- in an otherwise congratulatory assessment of Russia -- at outlining issues that could impair future relations between the two nations.
But a senior U.S. diplomat said Wednesday that the low-key approach should not be misunderstood, and suggested that trade issues, pro-Russia legislation in Congress and "funding for certain programs" could be jeopardized if Moscow veered from the path of democracy.
"If the Russians are interpreting this as a purely political exercise based on pro-forma considerations, they're making a big mistake," the envoy said.
Ivanov on Wednesday downplayed the significance Powell placed on the issues in his meetings and emphasized that Putin was able to respond substantively on each point.
But Viktor A. Kremenyuk, deputy director of the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow, said the Kremlin was shrugging off American criticism at its peril.
