Russia and the West. A colder coming we have of it

Vladimir Putin may prove mildly constructive over Iran, but as Russia assumes the G8 presidency, he is not the partner the West once hoped for

A POSSIBLY apocryphal story has it that, in the 1980s, Soviet troops in East Germany had to attend sessions of political instruction. Insubordinate air-force officers would skip the indoctrination and congregate at the buffet, where an ingratiating KGB man would try to wheedle them back in. The officers called him the "head of the club". His name was Vladimir Putin.

Twenty-odd years later, the KGB-man-turned-president is head of another club: the G8 group of rich countries, whose presidency Russia assumed at the start of the year. Not so long ago, the idea of Mr Putin presiding over a gathering of free-market democracies might have seemed optimistic, but not altogether implausible. Yet, even before the gas-to-Ukraine squabble that marked the start of the year, Russia's membership of the G8 was looking hard to reconcile with its trajectory under Mr Putin. Russia's relationship with the West has changed, incrementally but surely, for the worse. Why?

The true transformation may have taken place not inside the Kremlin but in foreign perceptions. Like Russian voters, foreign leaders were at first beguiled by Mr Putin's difference from his predecessor, the erratic and unpredictable Boris Yeltsin. Mr Putin was sober, business-like, apparently reliable and impressively committed to macroeconomic stability.

Andrei Illarionov, a maverick liberal economic adviser to Mr Putin who finally resigned in December, bewailing a decline in political and economic freedom, identifies the start of the Yukos affair in July 2003 as a key turning-point. But in fact the tendencies that have been causing international concern to mount during Mr Putin's second presidential term were evident throughout his first, in 2000-04: harassment of uppity tycoons, centralisation of political power and suppression of an independent media, not to mention the brutal war in Chechnya.

In the rose-tinted years, some western diplomats mistook what now looks like a tactical decision--Mr Putin's embrace of the United States after September 11th--for a strategic one. As circumstances changed over the years, old KGB instincts returned to the fore. In foreign-policy terms, that has meant a zero-sum attitude to diplomacy; the pursuit of great-power status, especially via energy exports; and a propensity to believe that the rest of the world thinks and acts in just the same way. Russian interference in the Ukrainian elections of last winter suggested that Mr Putin sees the democratic process merely as a way of legitimising power, not as an end in itself; it also disillusioned westerners who still hoped that revanchist domestic policies could be separated from foreign policy.

None of which means that Russia and the West can never work together. Indeed, they are trying to do so over Iran. Russia's commercial interests in Iran's civilian nuclear programme notwithstanding, the Kremlin's attitude to Tehran, says Rose Gottemoeller, a non-proliferation analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, is "changing fast". Apart from anything else, as more countries get the bomb, Russia's own cherished nuclear status becomes less valuable. Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, this week emphasised the primacy of the non-proliferation regime, and the moratorium on Iranian uranium enrichment. Mr Putin revived the offer of a joint Russian-Iranian enrichment programme on Russian territory; the Iranians said they were considering it.

But there are differences of interest, even over Iran. For the Russians, the crisis represents an opportunity. As Bobo Lo, of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, puts it, Russia has a taste for "controlled tension": diplomatic situations short of conflict, in which Russia's membership of the UN Security Council gives it extra clout, as in the run-up to the Iraq war. That influence is diluted if the Russians merely go along with the Americans and Europeans, or if the tension dissipates quickly. Such considerations may explain why Mr Lavrov argues that imposing sanctions on Iran is "in no way the best, or the only, way to solve the problem."

The new-year gas row is unlikely to be the only source of friction between Russia and its G8 partners in the months before their July summit in St Petersburg. There will be parliamentary elections in Ukraine in March: although it increasingly looks as much a corruption scandal as a political spat, the gas dispute has contradicted the idea that the Kremlin has "accepted defeat" in Ukraine. Also in March there is a presidential poll in nastily authoritarian Belarus, where western advocacy of free elections will once again be interpreted in Moscow as impudent meddling in Russia's "near abroad".

The pattern of western responses to Mr Putin now seems set: intermittent, mild public rebukes (such as the scolding by Condoleezza Rice, America's secretary of state, over the gas affair) balanced by conciliatory photo opportunities. To students of diplomatese, the public mentions by Angela Merkel, the new German chancellor, of Chechnya and the government's restrictions on non-governmental organisations, during her visit to Moscow this week, hinted at a welcome stiffening of Germany's approach.

Yet despite pressure from some American congressmen, there is little appetite to embarrass Mr Putin in St Petersburg. Mr Illarionov argues that, by attending the summit, the seven other world leaders will be seen as giving their "stamp of approval" to Russia's recent behaviour (though he glumly admits that there is not much they could do to change it). "That is not the impression we want to leave," says one American official, arguing that to isolate Russia would only make things worse.

Further ahead loom Russia's own parliamentary and presidential elections, in late 2007 and early 2008. "Elections in a non-free country, as Russia is today, don't matter much," sniffs Mr Illarionov. In foreign-policy terms, he may be right: the successor chosen by Mr Putin is likely to offer the same combination of prickliness and occasional pragmatism. (His nearest rival may be a strident nationalist, just the sort of bogeyman Mr Yeltsin used to conjure up to persuade voters and foreign interests to stay behind him.)

One leading contender for the top job is Sergei Ivanov, now defence minister and deputy prime minister, and another Russian politician who looks more western than he is. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Mr Ivanov noted the emergence of new threats to national security that might require military action. "Chief among them," wrote this ex-KGB man, "is interference in Russia's internal affairs by foreign states."

Feature discusses relations between Russia and the western powers. As Russia assumes the presidency of the G8, the west is disappointed that Vladimir Putin is not the partner they hoped for.