Putin: A living riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

Key quote

"Russian relations with other developed western nations are at the lowest point since the end of the Cold War." - US think-tank

Story in full ALMOST six years to the day, in a 16th-century castle in the Slovenian hills, George Bush looked deep into Vladimir Putin's eyes and "got a sense of his soul".

After his first meeting with his Russian counterpart, the US president declared: "I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy."

Today, Mr Bush, like the other leaders gathering in Germany for the annual Group of Eight summit, will once again look into those steel-grey eyes and wonder: will this man lead the world into a new Cold War?

Before every major international summit, leaders manoeuvre carefully, dropping hints about their intentions and staking out positions, hoping to maximise their own advantage around the negotiating tables. As pre-summit gambits go, Mr Putin's, delivered on Sunday, was certainly striking, threatening to train Russia's nuclear missiles on European targets once again in protest at Mr Bush's plan for an anti-ballistic missile system partly based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

It was a dramatic statement, if largely symbolic - it takes seconds to set a missile's target, so Russia's arsenal poses the same threat to Europe whether "targeted" or not - and Mr Bush yesterday went out of his way to insist he is still keen to do business with the Russian leader.

But the nuclear warning was the latest in an ever longer list of flare-ups between Russia and the West: supplying Iran with nuclear technology; menacing former Soviet republics by cutting off their energy supplies; undermining Russian opposition groups; waging bloody war on Chechen separatists; pressuring western oil companies for a bigger slice of their profits; blocking United Nations' moves to make Kosovo an independent state; even harbouring a former spy accused of murder in a London hotel. A diverse list of grievances, but all of them instigated by Mr Putin, directly or otherwise.

And for all the inevitable attempts to portray a united front at the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm in Germany, those provocations and confrontations are taking their diplomatic toll behind the scenes. In the opinion of the Moscow office of the Heritage Foundation, a US think-tank: "Russian relations with other developed western nations are at the lowest point since the end of the Cold War."

So who is Vladimir Putin, the slim, trim former spy who rules modern Russia with an iron fist and a will to match? Fittingly, for an espionage professional, Mr Putin rose almost without trace. After a middling career in the old KGB, including a stint in East Germany, he returned to his home town of St Petersburg in 1990, and renewed his university friendship with Anatoly Sob-chak, then the city's mayor.

Mr Sobchak drew Mr Putin into the wider political circle around president Boris Yeltsin, and he slowly climbed through a number of bureaucratic postings in the chaotic post-Soviet power structure. By 1998, he was head of the FSB, one of the successors to the fractured KGB.

Crucially, the appointment was made by Mr Yeltsin, who was even then looking for the man who would replace him as president. Mr Yeltsin's criteria for a successor were loyalty, competence and willingness to protect the interests of "The Family," the cabal of relatives and allies who surrounded the old president and had grown enormously rich during the 1990s.

In August 1999, Mr Yeltsin surprised the world by appointing Mr Putin his prime minister and heir. On the last day of the year, he sprang a bigger surprise by resigning, making Mr Putin acting president.

Perhaps the greatest irony of Mr Putin's elevation is that his presidency began amid suspicions that he was nothing but a cipher, a puppet of powerful and wealthy men like Boris Berezovsky, one of the oligarchs who dominated Russia in the late 1990s.

But in a turn of events that says much about Mr Putin, Mr Berezovsky is now in exile: he has been granted political asylum in Britain, and says he fears for his life from his old friend's shadowy allies.

Likewise Tatyana Dyachenko, Mr Yeltsin's daughter and once a key Kremlin powerbroker: Mr Putin summarily dismissed her weeks after he became president, then cantered to his first election victory as the man who would end political corruption and restore Russia's pride.

He has not looked back since. Buoyed by a high oil price and higher domestic popularity, he has tightened his grip on Russian politics to a stranglehold. If he steps down next year, as the constitution demands, he will still be able to hand-pick and control his successor.

His foreign policy has grown ever more assertive. Although he backed US-led action in Afghanistan in 2001, he flatly opposed the Iraq war in 2003. Recently, he has made no secret of his desire to restore Moscow's influence in the "near abroad", the former Soviet republics that border Russia and that have been leaning ever more to the West.

As his nation became more stable and prosperous, Mr Putin found strong supporters among an early generation of western leaders. France's Jacques Chirac was friendly, and Germany's Gerhard Schroder once called the Russian "a peerless democrat". But both have moved on, replaced by leaders more suspicious of him: Nicolas Sarkozy of France was critical of Russia in his recent election campaign.

"The big problem with Russian leaders is that they still think of international politics as a zero-sum game - every gain for the West must be a loss for Moscow," says one think-tank analyst with close links to the German government of Angela Merkel, the host of this week's meeting.

And even Tony Blair, who once visited Mr Putin at his private dacha north of Moscow with his wife, has cooled, as the list of Mr Putin's provocations has grown. Lately, Mr Blair's approach has been economic - publicly warning Russia that inward investment in its economy is at risk from an increasingly authoritarian government in Moscow.

One British diplomat who has dealt with the Russian president shivers as he discusses the face-to-face meetings between leaders that will take place in Germany this week. "There is something unnerving about him when he fixes you with a stare," says the envoy. "Even when he's trying to be warm, his eyes are absolutely dead."

G8: What's on the agenda

• THERE will be a push for greater investment in Africa, with a drive to make countries live up to their pledges of more development aid.

While G8 countries have moved to scrap debt, they have been slower to deliver on aid. During Tony Blair's presidency, pledges were made to deliver debt relief, boost aid budgets by $50 billion by 2010 and ensure more money was provided for universal access to HIV treatment and education.

The United States and Germany have announced aid packages ahead of the summit, boosting spending on HIV and aid respectively. Measures to increase transparency and eradicate corruption in Africa will also be addressed.

• THERE is pressure for world leaders to agree emissions targets to combat climate change. A possible stand-off could ensue, after George Bush's calls for a separate climate summit were interpreted as an attempt to sideline the G8 talks. There is also pressure on China, India and Brazil to commit to curbs on their emissions.

The UK wants a commitment to stop temperatures from rising more than 2C above pre-industrial levels or to reduce emissions by around half their 1990 levels by 2050.

It prefers the scheme to be part of a United Nations framework under which countries have been seeking to find a successor to the 1997 Kyoto accord.

• WORLD trade talks are one of three priorities for the summit.

The big developing countries and the United States want more access to Europe's protected markets, while the EU wants America to reduce subsidies for its own farmers.

India and Brazil are also under pressure to reduce protective barriers for their goods.

This would make it easier for agreement on agricultural and industrial goods by all 150 members of the World Trade Organisation by the end of July.

There will also be an emphasis on the "human face of globalisation".

In his own words ...

“The US has overstepped its borders in all spheres – economic, political and humanitarian. We see a hyper-inflated use of force”

April 2007

“We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as in Iraq”

Putin responds to US concerns about Russian civil rights, G8 summit, 2006

“We’d be interested in your experience, including how it applies to Lord Levy...”

At the same summit, after Tony Blair criticised corruption in Russia

“Moves by Iran have convinced us that it has no intention to build nuclear weapons”

Moscow, February 2005

“They provoke law enforcement forces to use force, and they respond”

May 2007, after EU leaders protested about Russian police treatment of pro-democracy protesters

“If you want to become an Islamic radical and are ready to have a circumcision, I invite you to Moscow. I will recommend this surgery in such a way so nothing would grow out of you again”

Putin to a journalist who questioned Russia’s conduct in Chechnya, 2002

“Should we catch them in a s***house, we'll kill them in a s***house”

On Chechen separatists