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Nov. 14 witnessed a busy morning in the former Soviet world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in Uzbekistan to sign an "alliance" agreement which, according to some rumors, includes a military base for Russia in Uzbekistan.

Gazprom reached a five-year transit deal with Kazakhstan's state natural gas transit company KazMunaiGas to transit 55 billion cubic meters of Turkmen and Uzbek natural gas a year, giving Gazprom monopoly control over all three states' natural gas exports

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has apprehended Igor Reshetin, general director of TsNIIMASH-Export company, and two of his deputies for illegally transferring space technology to the Chinese.

The presidential administrators for the Volga and Russian Far East regions -- Sergei Kiriyenko and Konstantin Pulikovsky -- were dismissed from their positions.

Putin promoted presidential chief of staff and chairman of Gazprom, Dmitry Medvedev, to be the country's first deputy prime minister. He will retain his position at Gazprom, but leave the presidential administration.

Putin also promoted Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to the position of deputy prime minister.

It is easiest to understand these changes in terms of geopolitics first, personalities second and finally the shaping of policies.

Russia is in a vise. Though it has bounced back from the depths of the 1998 ruble crisis, the Russian military, economic, social and demographic fabric not only is badly frayed but continues to tear. Advancing geopolitical pressure from the West, China and the Islamic world compounds these indigenously arising problems; collectively they threaten the future existence of the Russian state itself. Under Putin, the Russian government has been struggling with how to address these myriad threats and preserve itself, and the Nov. 14 changes must be viewed in this light.

The rise of people such as Medvedev and Ivanov is hardly shocking. Medvedev is Putin's protégé, while Ivanov is the leader of the siloviki, a loose alliance of Russian foreign, military and intelligence personnel who want to restore Russia to its imperial glory. The two men's stars have been rising for some time, and Putin has been sure to keep them close. Now both potential presidential successors are even closer.

Medvedev is a canny operator who is an economic strategist, while Ivanov commands the respect of the bulk of the country's nationalist forces as well as the military. But both of them are also pragmatists like Putin. Their view of Russia's challenges is not drowned in hyperbole while their views of Russia's options are not jaundiced by Soviet-era ideology.

These are not men who regularly moan about how unfairly Western markets treat Russian goods, or about how NATO is poised to invade Murmansk. These are men who see things the way they actually are and plan accordingly. Medvedev's role with Gazprom makes him central, and extremely effective, in Russia's relations with Europe, while Ivanov's clear-eyed capabilities have helped him manipulate Russia's more enthusiastically paranoid nationalists into a coherent political force more or less under Kremlin control.

Both men's fingerprints -- but particularly Ivanov's -- are all over the Nov. 14 summit with Uzbekistan. Tashkent has been extremely cold toward Moscow since the end of the Soviet Union, seeing itself -- and not Russia -- as the natural heir to rule in Central Asia. There are more Uzbeks in Central Asia than any other nationality, and Uzbekistan -- not Russia -- borders every one of the former Soviet Central Asian states.

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