Strongman, The

in the de-Sovietising Yeltsin years. At a gala ball in the evening the prime minister made a speech to his former colleagues, and joked: ‘I want to report that a group of FSB operatives, sent to work undercover in the government, is successfully carrying out the first stage of its mission.’
    The second stage was about to begin. Ten days later, Yeltsin resigned and Putin assumed supreme power in Russia.

 
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COURTING THE WEST
    ‘I want Russia to be part of Europe’
    Russia’s relations with NATO had been frozen ever since the allied bombing of Yugoslavia in March 1999. ‘NATO’s representative in Moscow has been told to pack his bags,’ announced Russia’s foreign minister, Igor Ivanov. ‘There will be no contact with NATO, including its secretary general, until the aggression against Yugoslavia stops.’
    But at the beginning of 2000, shortly after Vladimir Putin became acting president of Russia, the telephone rang in the secretary general’s office at NATO headquarters in Brussels. It was none other than Igor Ivanov, and George Robertson, the new NATO chief, was taken aback. He had arrived in Brussels in October and had decided one of his first tasks should be to get Russia ‘back into the security fold’, but until now nothing had happened.
    ‘If you were thinking of coming to Moscow,’ said Ivanov, coyly warming to his theme, ‘I want to say that you might find that this would be welcomed.’ 1
    And so it was that Robertson became the first major Western politician to meet the new Russian president. He flew into Moscow in February on a plane provided by the German air force.
    Putin seemed to be tickled by the idea, and the sight of a Luftwaffe jet in Moscow helped to break the ice.
    ‘Why did you come on a German plane?’ he asked.
    Robertson quickly realised that the word ‘Luftwaffe’, emblazoned across the side of his plane, evoked a certain sensitivity in Russia in view of the horrors its bombers had inflicted in the Second World War. He explained that NATO itself had no planes, so he had to borrow from the member states.
    ‘Hmm,’ said Putin, practising his English. ‘Maybe next time, secretary general, you should come in a British plane.’
    Robertson had brought a gift for him – a book in English about the tsarist court, which he had found in an antiquarian bookshop. The Russian leader was delighted. It turned out that he was making a serious effort to learn English, now that his profession of ‘mingling with people’ would include a great many foreign leaders.
    ‘I like to read these English books out loud to practise,’ he told Robertson, and then added, ‘so now my dog is fluent in English.’
    There was substance to the charm offensive as well as jokes. Robertson recalls Putin being quite blunt and to the point: ‘He was less confident than he was eventually to be. He was very new to the job. He wasn’t even in the job – he was still acting president.’
    ‘I want to sort our relationship out,’ said Putin. ‘It’s not constructive at the moment, and I want to resume relations with NATO. Step by step. It can’t happen overnight – and a lot of people disagree with me on this.’ Putin gestured at his defence minister, Marshal Sergeyev, and his foreign minister, Igor Ivanov. ‘But I know what I want, and I want Russia to be part of Europe. That’s where its destiny is. So let us work out how best we can do that.’
    The British ambassador told Robertson he was impressed by such a bold, early foreign-policy decision. The relationship had been so fractious that for him to say ‘we are going to resume it’ was a big thing. Robertson sensed that Putin wanted to have ‘an uncluttered relationship’ – to sweep aside the inherited obstacles and talk about the big issues. ‘They wanted to be taken seriously as a major player in the world.’
    One other world leader was keen to oblige. Prime Minister Tony Blair saw a chance to make Britain Russia’s ‘partner of choice’ in Europe and decided to ‘get in early’ with a trip to Russia in the first half of March – before Putin was even elected president (the election was due on 26 March). He was more willing at this stage to turn a blind eye to Putin’s ruthless campaign against Chechnya than either Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany or President Jacques Chirac of France. The Foreign Office, too, was wary of the ex-KGB man who was apparently presiding over what many considered to be atrocities in