MOSCOW -- President Barack Obama laid out a vision of greater cooperation between the United States and Russia on Tuesday in a speech that also contained thinly veiled criticism of the Kremlin's authoritarian style of rule.
Washington and Moscow have shared interests that should lead to broader cooperation, Obama said during the last day of his trip to the Russian capital. ''America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia,'' he said. However, the president added that ``unfortunately, there is sometimes a sense that old assumptions must prevail . . . a 19th-century view that we are destined to vie for spheres of influence.''
'PRIVILEGED' SPHERE
His critique seemed directed at the Russian leadership, which repeatedly has asserted that it has a ''privileged'' sphere of power in the region that the Soviet Union once dominated. Last week, Obama said that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer who is widely viewed as the man in charge of Russian policy, has ``one foot in the old ways of doing business.''
Obama delivered his message to the graduating class of the New Economic School, a group he described as being born after ``the darkest hours of the Cold War.''
While he said that it was up to Russia to choose its own course, Obama told the audience he agreed with President Dmitry Medvedev about the need for an effective legal system. Critics of the government often complain about corruption, and sometimes use it as a sort of code to express wider discontent with Kremlin policy.
Russia ranked behind Uganda, Kazakhstan, and Yemen in the most recent Transparency International survey of corruption.
''The arc of history shows that governments which serve their own people survive and thrive; governments which serve only their own power do not,'' Obama said.
Before delivering his address, Obama had breakfast with Putin in his the prime minister's heavily guarded suburban home.
Putin acknowledged that U.S.-Russia relations have experienced ``periods of, shall we say, grayish mood.''
During the past year, Russia has invaded Georgia -- a U.S. ally -- and cut gas supplies to Ukraine, also a U.S. ally.
The meeting , their first, stretched more than half an hour longer than expected.
`A MAN OF TODAY'
Afterward, a senior Obama administration official signaled that the president was backing off his earlier assessment of Putin or at least curtailing explicit criticism in public. Asked about Obama's ''one foot'' comment, the official said that, ``I would say that he's very convinced that the prime minister is a man of today and has got his eyes firmly on the future.''
That official, and a second who also briefed reporters, spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The two officials said that there were topics on which Obama and Putin found common interest: anti-terrorism measures, arms control, climate change and energy security.
McClatchy special correspondent Alla Burakovskaya contributed to this report.
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