MB Civic

By C. J. CHIVERS

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia

A year ago, a top Kremlin strategist quietly met with members of Russia’s elite. It was a moment of high tension and introspection.

Three uprisings over flawed elections had recently swept aside failing governments in the former Soviet sphere, and President Vladimir V. Putin was facing criticism for everything from his authoritarian tilt to failures in handling the school siege in Beslan. Moreover, President Bush had made the encouragement of democracy in authoritarian states a prominent part of his foreign policy plans, a move seen as threatening here.

Dubbed “the secret speech” in the Russian news media, the remarks by the Putin strategist, Vladislav Surkov, offered a scathing assessment of Russia’s problems and lingering Soviet legacies. Russia “is a badly illuminated remote area of Europe, but it is not Europe yet,” he said, according to a transcript that circulated later.

Mr. Surkov bristled at Western criticism and what he described as efforts to undercut Russia, to control its natural resources and to diminish the Kremlin’s influence with neighboring states and even Russian citizens, in part by imposing foreign expectations for democracy and rule of law. He urged his listeners to be loyal and patient. “And if something goes wrong one should not speak of complete failure, that the country is ruled by mediocrities who do not understand a thing,” he said.

This was a deep Russian funk.

Jump ahead to last week.

As Mr. Bush arrived on Friday for the Group of 8 summit meeting, he was greeted by a Kremlin that has emerged from last year’s crises of confidence and displays of pique. It is no longer ruminating over mediocrities. A bolder Russia has appeared. Buoyed by soaring oil prices and relieved after Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Belarus forcefully stopped protests against corrupt but loyal states, the Kremlin has restored its sense of self. Rather than worry about whether Russia is fully European, it has made clear that it plans to flex what power it has and reject lectures from the West. Mr. Putin is seeking to reclaim Russia’s place as part of a multipolar world, and loudly.

“The reality has changed in an incredible way,” said Andrew C. Kuchins, director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “It is accentuated because Russia had been on a losing streak for 20 years.”

Mr. Bush arrives at a moment of intensive debate in United States foreign policy circles about what his administration’s Russia policy should be. American diplomats and policy advocates hope he can dissuade Mr. Putin from authoritarianism and make Russia a more fruitful partner in many areas, including nuclear safety, diplomacy with North Korea and Iran, and American firms’ access to Russia’s oil and gas.

Critics have called for efforts at punishing Russia with stronger criticism, even ostracism. Garry Kasparov, the chess champion who has become an opposition leader, pointedly asked the members of the “Group of 7” — his phrase for the Group of 8, less Russia — to protest against Russian backsliding on democracy and human rights. He expressed disgust that Russia was part of this club.

“I don’t even understand what G8 means, because the G7 stood for seven great democracies, which Russia is not,” he said.

Mr. Putin has taken care to show he is willing to cooperate on some issues with Mr. Bush, whom he calls a friend. But he has clearly and pre-emptively rebuffed those who think that Russia can be pushed, saying such thinking is rooted in the cold war and does not grasp that the new Russia — rich in oil and gas and determined to maintain its leading role in regions formerly under the Soviet yoke — sees itself as on the ascent.

“This approach is based on the foreign policy philosophy of the 20th century in which our partner’s basic premise was the need to keep Russia in check,” Mr. Putin said in an interview with NBC News. “The people who think this way do not realize and understand the geopolitical changes taking place in the world today and are not looking at how the situation will develop 15, 20 or 25 years down the road.”

The two presidents greeted each other with casual familiarity when they met for dinner Friday, but Mr. Putin has been critical of elements of United States Russia policy. He jabbed at Dick Cheney in the same NBC interview, saying that his accusation that Russia blackmails its neighbors with energy policies was “the same thing as an unfortunate shot while out hunting.”

No one expected so swift a shift. In early 2005, the Kremlin was suffering from public setbacks and missteps, and expressing worries that it was vulnerable to an uprising.

Rigged elections in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan had led to uprisings that chased post-Soviet machines from power and engendered a wider sense among opposition movements that power could be challenged. The Kremlin’s Chechnya policy looked to be in shambles, with terrorists operating almost freely in the North Caucasus, having assassinated Mr. Putin’s hand-picked president and bombed and raided with sinister efficiency. Western governments criticized his handling of the trial of the oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky and the bizarrely staged auction and transfers of the Yukos oil company’s assets to Kremlin control.

Mr. Putin held tight rein on the Russian government, his approval ratings were high, and he had cowed business into submission or collaboration. But his problems went on and on. Much seemed out of his reach.

SINCE then, oil prices have climbed so much that Russia, nearly a pauper state as recently as the late 1990’s, has paid down debts. The most prominent Chechen separatists have been killed.

The Kremlin’s public mood has reversed. Russia still has deep and persistent problems, including large-scale poverty, environmental degradation, decaying infrastructure, a pliant judiciary and corrupt police force, high rates of fatal disease, an insurgency with a militant Islamic cast in the North Caucasus, and the problems with rights and freedoms that Mr. Bush has been urged to address. But as a nation that has historically been one of the world’s geopolitical poles, it has reawakened to its potency.

Mr. Putin is welcoming the seven other members of the prestigious club to a St. Petersburg party. But admission comes with a message. Russia is back, the Kremlin is saying. Do not push. The West is struggling to decide its course.

“For 15 or 20 years we kind of forgot what the Russians were like,” Dr. Kuchins said. “And now the Russians are acting like Russians again.”