Anatol Lieven is right to cite the West's approach to Turkey as a model for how to engage Russia today ("A different way of talking to Russia," Views, Oct. 18). Western advocates of disengagement and containment are gravely mistaken. Such an approach would only lead to greater conflict with Russia and would further isolate the Russian people from the West.

However, Western leaders and especially EU leaders must not compromise their standards concerning markets and democracy.

Sergei Markov is right to worry about potential unrest and instability in Ukraine after the upcoming presidential vote. What his "view from Moscow," laid out in an op-ed in The Moscow Times earlier this week, fails to see, however, is the source of this unrest. The necessary, though not sufficient, condition for unrest is a clearly documented falsified vote. If "Moscow" is concerned about instability on Russia's border, then the Kremlin should be doing all that it can to ensure that the vote is free and fair. To date, there are few signs that Moscow is committed to facilitating such an outcome.

Of course, the playing field for all presidential candidates in the Ukrainian election has never been level, and the Kremlin has done much to tilt the context in favor of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

Lots of ruthless dictators have remained in power during [George W. Bush]'s tenure, but they were in power before Bush came to the White House. Russia is the only major country in the world that has, during Bush's time in office, moved from "partly free" to "not free" (as determined by Freedom House, the leading institution in the democracy assessment business). Vladimir V. Putin is also one of the few leaders in the world with whom Bush has developed a close relationship. If Russian democracy completely breaks down while Bush is still in office, Bush's decision to invest so much time and energy in Putin will look like a strategic mistake.

On the surface, the presidential election campaign in Iran underscores the weakness of the Iranian democratic movement and the futility of elections under Iran's current Constitution.

Most of the would-be candidates were barred from the election by the hard-line Guardian Council, the unelected mullahs who control Parliament. And many leading democrats, disappointed in their hopes that President Mohammad Khatami would be the reformer he had promised to be, have called for a boycott of the vote on Friday.

Beneath the surface, however, there are encouraging signs for the future of Iranian democracy.

In my travels to more than 50 countries, I have been thrown out of only one - Uzbekistan - just a few months after its emergence as an independent state in 1992 under its first and only president, Islam Karimov. My crime? Working for an American democracy promotion organization and meeting with human rights activists.