MOSCOW: After years spent groping for a clear role in the post-Soviet world, Russia finally launched itself along a new track in foreign policy after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Combining deft political moves with evident compassion for the victims of the attacks, President Vladimir Putin threw his country’s support behind the emerging anti-terrorist coalition, no doubt mindful of the benefits it could bring.

Russia, too, was painfully aware of what terrorism at home means, Putin told the world, pointing to the simmering conflict in Chechnya and the devastating bomb attacks on apartment blocks in Moscow and other towns in 1999 that the Kremlin blamed on Chechen separatists.

Suddenly, Putin’s repeated warnings that terrorism emanating from the Caucasus and other hot spots could engulf many other countries were viewed in a new light.

Moscow’s support for the coalition — consisting mainly of providing intelligence on Afghanistan and tolerating deployment of US forces in former Soviet Central Asia — was gratefully received, and Russia found itself joining the Western camp in a manner unimaginable only a decade before.

Had a new doctrine come into existence? Political analyst Lilya Shevtsova of the Moscow Carnegie Centre believes so.

“Since September 11 the Kremlin’s foreign policy shows a goal and a resolute striving toward it,” she said.

Parliamentary deputy and analyst Alexei Arbatov agreed and defined the essence of the new policy as defusing old tensions and putting Russian economic interests to the fore. Emphasis on security affairs now also rests on “the untraditional threats” of terrorism or religious extremism, he said.

“Russia will cooperate with all countries in these areas, but the development of relations with the Western countries has priority,” Arbatov said.

Putin’s course and the rapid turn of international events after September 11 quickly reaped benefits for Russia.

In the immediate term, the US-led campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan conveniently suppressed a key menace of religious extremism and instability on Russia’s southern flank.

Russia’s new cooperative face also elicited US backing for its efforts to join the World Trade Organization, and this year, it also received full membership in the G8 group of the most industrialized countries, upgrading the associate position it was granted as a courtesy to Putin’s predecessor Boris Yeltsin.

But perhaps most gratifyingly for Putin, world leaders stopped chiding him for the excesses of Russia’s military campaign in Chechnya. Critics maintained that his international colleagues now simply skirt the issue altogether to avoid compromising their new partner.

However, after years of confrontation and opposition to Western actions, the Kremlin’s sudden swing met with mixed reactions in Russia. Mistrust of things foreign and the sense of being threatened by the West nurtured in Soviet times remains ingrained in the minds of many people.

For the military establishment, the appearance of US forces in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia — Russia’s historic backyard — was nothing less than a slap in the face.

Indignation deepened when US military instructors also appeared in Georgia on the Black Sea, prompting Putin to remind the top brass that the republics were now independent states and free to take such steps, however galling to Russian pride.

Meanwhile, Nato continues to expand toward Russia’s borders, with neighbouring Ukraine now speaking increasingly about future membership in the Western military alliance. This encroachment is still too much for Moscow to stomach, regardless of the overall detente.

The new partnership Russia sealed with Nato in May, which established a joint decision-making body to counter terrorism and other security threats, was seen by many as appeasement in the face of Nato’s push East and Washington’s withdrawal from the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty and commitment to building its own missile defence shield.

As military tacticians in Moscow worried about disruption to the strategic balance, the Russian media portrayed the Nato partnership as a “slight promotion” of their country at the international level.

Despite exuberant declarations over the new, close US-Russian relations, the West was still far from trusting Russia all the way — and vice versa.—dpa