Reuters VLADIMIR Putin's decision to return to the Kremlin will strain Russia's fragile relations with the United States, threatening to undermine improvements he helped engineer by steering Dmitry Medvedev into the presidency in 2008. Putin's plan to reclaim the top office from his protege in a March 2012 election will remove Medvedev, who has played a vital role in a “reset” of long-strained ties, from centre stage in the relationship with Moscow's former Cold War foe. Putin, who is virtually certain to win a six-year presidential term and could run again in 2018, would take his place as chief interlocutor for US President Barack Obama. “That changes the atmospherics overnight,” said Samuel Charap, director for Russia and Eurasia at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think-tank. “You could not have Putin and Obama, jackets slung over shoulders, walking together from the White House to the US Chamber of Commerce,” he said. A tech-savvy product of the generation that grew up as cracks opened the Soviet Union to Western influence, Medvedev, 46, toured Silicon Valley and chatted with Obama over cheeseburgers during a US visit last year. Putin, 58, often accusing the United States of seeking to undermine Russia. Ties soured badly during Putin's eight-year presidency and hit a post-Soviet low when Russian tanks rolled into NATO aspirant Georgia three months after Medvedev took office. Relations have marched mostly uphill from there: Medvedev has warmly embraced Obama's push to improve ties, forged a friendly rapport with the US president and signed a landmark nuclear arms control deal with him last year. Medvedev has also brought the Kremlin closer to Washington on Iran, supporting new United Nations sanctions and banning the delivery of air-defense missiles to Tehran. During his term, Russia has stepped up logistical support for the US war in Afghanistan. Russian and US officials have said Putin's return will not throw the “reset” off track. On Monday, US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: “Putin in his current role has been a part of those discussions and cooperation.” Putin has remained Russia's paramount leader, and courting the United States seems to have been part his brief to Medvedev, so Charap said there was “no reason to believe there will be a radical shift in Russian policy” towards the United States. “There will not be a rollback of the major accomplishments of the reset,” said Matthew Rojansky, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. But in a relationship where signals and symbolism have spoken loudly since the propaganda-filled era of the Cold War, analysts say the Russian leadership change could make it much harder to agree on further cooperation. “They may hold the same position, but Putin's style is very different from Medvedev's – it's more confrontational, more combative and aggressive,” said Fiona Hill, a Russia expert and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. If Putin sets the tone in the top-down system he has labored to maintain, “it becomes a different diplomatic game.” The road towards agreement on the divisive issue of missile defense may get even rougher, said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, and the chances of forging further nuclear arms cuts may also diminish. __
