Putin emerges a winner after Iraq war

Stefan Wagstyl and Andrew Jack

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has emerged, somewhat improbably, as one of the winners of the Iraq war.

In siding with France and Germany in opposing the US-led invasion, Mr Putin risked damaging his carefully cultivated friendship with George W. Bush, US president. But while Washington has made clear its displeasure with Paris and Berlin, it has dealt gently with Moscow.

Mr Putin has kept his ties with the US intact, improved his relationship with France and Germany and maintained his record standing in the Russian opinion polls.

To cap it all, Mr Putin will have the chance to celebrate his achievement on an international stage this week when he hosts Mr Bush and over 40 other leaders, who are visiting St Petersburg for the city's 300th anniversary celebrations.

"This is a very important event, both from the practical and the symbolic point of view," says Sergei Prihodko, Mr Putin's top foreign policy adviser.

It is a far cry from the frantic pre-war diplomacy, when Russia found itself opposed to the US and pushed into a troika with France and Germany. The Kremlin insists it decided its policy on a principle - the defence of a United Nations-dominated multilateral world order.

But diplomats in Moscow say that Mr Putin's approach was anything but clear, and included complicated efforts to protect Russian business interests in Iraq.

However, in the aftermath US officials have decided to treat Mr Putin more favourably than Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schrцder, the French and German leaders, because he was a less enthusiastic critic.

The war's end certainly leaves Mr Putin in a better position than seemed likely a few weeks ago, but the Russian president must still c onfront fundamental challenges in establishing a role in the world for his country.

He wants to align Russia closer with the US and the European Union, arguing that Russia has common interests with the west in everything from economic partnerships to fighting terrorism.

He also knows that friendly ties with the west will ease the adoption of western ideas in Russia.

However, Mr Putin cannot turn Russia into another European ally of the US, like France, Germany or the UK. Millions of Russians still see their country as a superpower. So, Mr Putin tries to maintain the illusion that Russia is still a potential challenge to the US.

He preserves links with Soviet-era allies such as Cuba and with states blacklisted by Washington such as Syria and Iran. These countries are also buyers of Russian arms, a key consideration in a country with big military factories.

Mr Putin does not expect the US to treat Russia as an equal. But he wants respect. And he wants it to be public, so it can be relayed to ordinary Russians. The expansion of the Group of Seven leading industrialised countries to the Group of Eight, including Russia, was a triumph by the Kremlin. As Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the Yabloko liberal group, says: "We want to feel inside the same room."

The St Petersburg celebrations will almost certainly help Russians to feel that they do indeed belong to the right club.

But there are also some flies in the ointment. First, whatever Mr Putin might feel, Russia is nowhere near the top of Washington's agenda. As Bob Nurick, head of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, a think-tank, says: "The danger is not that anything dramatic will change in the relationship, but that below the pleasantness on the surface, it will be essentially empty."

Next, the tensions between the US and the EU have stirred up the western club to which Russia wants to belong. Mr Prihodko says Moscow wants to work with both partners. But this will be more difficult if there is a transatlantic rift.

Also, Russia's ties with Iran and other states the US regards as hostile could threaten links between Moscow and Washington, just as happened over Iraq.

Finally, with parliamentary elections due this autumn and a presidential poll next year, Mr Putin will pay more attention to domestic criticism.

He seems assured of victory himself but will try to protect his parliamentary supporters from attack by communists and other critics of his west-oriented foreign policy. As one western diplomat in Moscow says: "This will not be the time for us to put pressure on Putin."

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