The building of a “new economic architecture” and a counterweight to NATO doesn’t happen overnight, and despite the doldrums and credit crisis, the Kremlin is still hobbling towards its goals in the East.  Have both Washinton and Brussels forgotten just how strategically important Turkey is to this new game?  From the Asia Times Online:

The fact that Gul’s Moscow visit also included a stop in Tatarstan, the largest autonomous republic in the Russian Federation, whose population mainly consists of Muslim Tatar Turks, is a sign of just how much relations between Ankara and Moscow have improved in recent months as Turkey cooled to Washington’s foreign policy. In previous years, Moscow was convinced that Turkey was trying to establish Pan-Turanism in the Caucasus, Central Asia and inside the Russian Federation. Today, Turkish relations with Turk entities inside the Russian Federation are clearly no longer considered suspicious, confirming a new mood of mutual trust.