In a move seen by the Washington Post to mark a break with predecessor Putin’s zero tolerance approach, President Medvedev has defended the right to criticize and accept criticism from other countries.  Putting this into practice, ahead of his first trip stateside, Medvedev has implicitly blamed the US for the financial crisis: ‘last year, we witnessed how one country’s ill-conceived financial policies became the reason for a global financial crisis, whose effects every country … feels today’.  The US is apparently concerned about Russia’s arms deal with Venezuela, believing that accumulation of arms in the South American state ‘poses a serious challenge to stability in the Western Hemisphere’.  At yesterday’s Modern State and Global Security Forum, also by attended by Spanish and French Prime Ministers, Medvedev also pledged that he would continue to push the European security treaty – which failed to muster much enthusiasm at its last outing.