Putin still pulls the strings

If one man stands between the EU and a lasting resolution of the Caucasus crisis, that man is Vladimir Putin. As Europe's leaders struggled to agree a response to Georgia's enforced partition ahead of today's emergency summit in Brussels, Russia's gun-toting prime minister was pictured strutting across the Siberian taiga, wearing camouflage and a tough expression, doing his familiar "Action Man" impersonation.

Putin's controlling hand has been in evidence since fighting erupted last month. He flew immediately from Beijing to visit Russian invasion troops at staging areas on the Georgian border. It was Putin who muddied the waters with talk of legitimate Russian peacekeeping operations and unsubstantiated claims of genocide and "ethnic cleansing". It is Putin who now mocks talk of EU sanctions and hints at diverting Russian oil and gas from Europe to China.

But for the most part Putin has used his hand-picked presidential successor, Dmitri Medvedev, as front man in fielding international outrage. While Medvedev dealt with French president Nicolas Sarkozy's frantic mediation efforts, fought the PR battle through stage-managed media interviews, and took the flak for Moscow's recognition of South Ossetian and Abkhazian independence, Putin deftly pulled the strings.

Medvedev's stand-up role as a sort of home-grown "useful idiot" seems to have freed Putin from the constraints normally facing a head of state, allowing him greater freedom of action. Backroom manipulation appears to suit the former KGB spy. But he has developed a taste for personal headline-grabbing, too, as shown by his Siberian tiger shoot and his black arts propaganda skills in turning the tables on the Bush administration.

"We know there were a lot of US advisers in Georgia. But (they) should be on firing ranges and teaching centres – but where were they? They were in the zone of military operations," Putin told German television at the weekend. "That pushes one to the conclusion that the US leadership knew about the action that was being prepared and morever probably took part in it.

"If the US leadership has sanctioned that, then I have the suspicion that it was done specially to organise a small victorious war. And if that didn't work, then to create from Russia the appearance of an enemy and unite the (US) electorate around one presidential candidate."

Putin went on: "In a significant way the crisis was provoked, including by our American friends in the course of the elections struggle … This was the use of administrative resources in a deplorable way to provide advantage to one of the candidates, in the current case from the ruling (Republican) party."

That the man who between 2000 and 2008 emasculated Russia's democratic institutions, silenced media and business critics, and eradicated independent centres of political and civil power should complain about "administrative abuses" will strike many as ironic. But that is not the main point at issue.

The idea that Washington neocon warriors were somehow responsible for a full-scale Russian military invasion by land, air and sea of a tiny neighbour appeals greatly to western apologists, whose voices have grown shrill in recent weeks. More generally it plays on anti-American sentiment in Europe. That was Putin's calculated aim.

While there is no evidence to support such a convoluted conspiracy theory, his words sent a chill. They revealed how implacable his hostility has become to what he perceives as Washington's quasi-imperial unipolarism, expressed most obviously through Nato's eastwards expansion. Putin's utter determination, aggressive style and deep cynicism suggest a comfortable, or even a mutually tolerant relationship between Russia on the one hand and the US and European allies such as Britain on the other is improbable as long as he wields back-seat-driver power.

This may come as no surprise to those, such as journalist Alan Cowell, who have followed Putin's rise and rise from the apartment block bombings and the second Chechen war in 1999 to the murder in London in 2006 of Kremlin foe Alexander Litvineneko. Cowell's new book about Litvinenko, The Terminal Spy, is written against a backdrop of Putin's ruthless rise to an unassailable position at the head of a power structure he remodelled to suit himself.

Putin would probably never have become a friend. But his enmity might have been avoided if western leaders had listened more carefully at the beginning. Speaking at the Genoa G8 summit in 2001, Putin said Russia would defend its strategic independence but neither did it pose a threat. He urged the US to maintain the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty and forego missile defence and cooperate instead on constructing new, post-cold war global security structures.

Nato's expansion was fuelling insecurity on Europe's edges, he said. Specifically he called for a "single security and defence space" in Europe to be created either by replacing Nato or having Russia join it as a full member.

He was ignored. And although this in theory is still Russia's position, with Putin and his US counterparts no longer on speaking terms and relations with the west under severe strain, the chance for collaboration has been missed. In Washington a new leader may bring a new approach. But Putin and Putinism, part Bush era collateral damage, part Russian dysfunction, seem set to go on indefinitely.

Simon Tisdall