RUSSIA’S support for Sunday night’s UN security council statement condemning the Houla killings is the first positive news to come out of the Syrian crisis for months. It opens up the possibility, hitherto remote, that Washington and Moscow may find common cause in easing out Bashar al-Assad and defusing the rebellion against the Damascus regime.

Russian spokesmen moved quickly on Monday to suggest events in Houla, where the UN says 116 civilians including dozens of children died in a bombardment by government forces last Friday, were “murky”, that regime opponents carried much of the blame for the carnage, and that Russia’s opposition to regime change remained steadfast.

But there was no escaping the fact that the unanimous UN statement represented a breach in the diplomatic defences Moscow has erected around the Syrian regime. And it can be assumed with some certainty, given its importance, that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, will have taken the decision himself.

Even as the Syrian death toll rose above 10,000, on UN figures, and Kofi Annan’s peace mission floundered, Russia continued to peddle the regime line that terrorists and religious extremists were responsible for provoking the violence. Now, by agreeing with the US and Britain that Assad is in violation of international law through his resort to “outrageous use of force”, Moscow has taken a both substantive and symbolic step towards backing the Syrian leader’s dethronement.

Russia has been under intense diplomatic pressure to shift position, pressure that has begun to damage its wider interests in the Middle East, in relation to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states (all opposed to Assad), and bilaterally with key European powers and the US. But this is in itself does not explain Moscow’s tentative lurch towards consensus.

A more likely explanation is the return to the foreign policy helm of Putin, reinstalled this month as Russia’s president. Putin is no dove, no cuddly peacemaker, as he has demonstrated repeatedly in conflict zones from Chechnya to Georgia. His approach is more that of a hard-nosed, unsentimental calculator of national advantage.

The most important item on Putin’s international agenda is not Syria, or any of the other Arab spring uprisings, for that matter. It is his meeting next month with Barack Obama. Putin deliberately snubbed the G8 summit hosted by the US president last week in Maryland. He made Obama wait several days before agreeing to accept his telephoned congratulations on his return to the presidency.

All this is familiar Putin-style oneupmanship. In theory, it gives him a psychological advantage when the two men meet. — The Guardian, London