MOSCOW: In the wake of a new nuclear arms control treaty between their country and the US, many Russians are feeling an undertow of doubt.

Ordinary citizens here often express confusion and sometimes outright suspicion about American intentions toward Russia. Some members of the policy elite complain that the summit — and the sweeping agreements to be signed today — are little more than smoke-and-mirrors designed to conceal Russia’s descent into strategic irrelevance.

“What partnership?” asks Andranik Migranyan, vice-chair of the Reforma Foundation, an independent Moscow-based think tank.

“Americans understand partnership as the complete subordination of Russia to American interests,” he says. “The agreements to be signed at this summit are meaningless window dressing, designed to keep Russia in its orbit.”

Opinion polls on Russian attitudes toward the US are mixed, but tend to show a population deeply divided and dubious about the prospects for the strategic partnership championed by the Kremlin.

One survey, conducted this month among 1,000 adults in the 10 largest Russian cities by the independent ROMIR agency, asked people what they thought of American designs toward Russia. Almost 29 per cent answered that the US was a “friendly” power; 28 per cent said the US is “neutral” in its attitude; and 40 per cent described the US as having “hostile” intentions.

Putin has been steering Russia Westward since Sept 11, when he phoned Bush to offer full support in the ‘war against terrorism’. Since then, the Kremlin has turned the other cheek as US forces entrenched in several former Soviet Central Asian republics and the troubled Caucasus nation of Georgia. Putin barely winced when Bush unilaterally pulled the US out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Russia still regards as the keystone of strategic stability.

While the deal is more far-reaching than even the wildest cold war-era hopes for disarmament, it is clouded by US insistence on storing its own decommissioned warheads rather than destroying them.

Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent defence expert, says this could leave the US with a vast preponderance of near-ready strategic arms within 10 years, since Russia will be forced by economic reasons to destroy most of its delivery systems.

One question hanging over the summit is whether Bush will officially declare Russia to be a “market economy.”—Dawn/The Christian Science Monitor News Service.