FOR THE MOMENT, Russian minds are mainly focused on the massive flooding in Siberia where the River Lena, one of the biggest in the country, has burst its banks threatening the lives of thousands of people. The issue that is just beginning to rumble below the surface, however, is aid — specifically US President George Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s planned moratorium on further assistance to Russia. It is a complete turn around in their policy. They have evidently accepted that attempts to financially induce Russia toward domestic liberalization and international political pliancy are a waste of money. They have abandoned the fear that turning off the taps would destabilize Russia and propel it into the hands of extremists, either the old guard or the far right.

Presumably they think that there is now not much difference between President Putin and the Communists. Needless to say, the Russians are far from happy. But there is a considerable irony in this. For the past half decade, from the time when they woke up to the fact that political and economic reform was not going to pave the streets of Moscow with gold or give every one of them their own free Mercedes Benz, antipathy to the West and to the US and NATO in particular has progressively increased. An opinion poll published in Moscow just last week indicates that 56 percent of Russians now view NATO as “a bloc of aggression” compared to 38 percent in 1997. Alongside this has been a growing nostalgia for the old Soviet Union, and all have gone hand in hand with a hardening resentment of Western aid, as if Russia had sold itself, surrendering influence and military might and replacing a viable political and economic system in favor of the West’s multiparty democracy and capitalism, and all in favor of armfuls of dollars, most of which have anyway been hijacked by the mafia. The response has been that the West can keep its money. Yet now, faced with the proposed Bush-Schroeder moratorium, the Russians do not seem to know what they want.

There can be little doubt, though, that far from making Russians think again about their relations with the West, the move will only add to their sense of alienation. As it is, hardly a day passes without the outside world, usually the West, being blamed for some anti-Russia move; it is usually linked with a convenient attack on elements within Russia whom the authorities wish to attack, either liberals or groups such as the Chechens. Only this week, the reported attempts by one California congressmen to end Russia’s membership in G-8 was conveniently blamed on the machinations of those Russian businessman who became billionaires during the Yeltsin era. It is all very reminiscent of the bad old Soviet days.

The planned summit between Presidents Bush and Putin set for June 16 in Slovenia may halt the slide back to a diplomatic ice age — Putin promises it will give an “impetus to Russian-US dialogue and interaction” — but that is doubtful. Ostensibly the reason for the moratorium is because of the massive flight of capital out of the country. It is certainly a worrying trend: last year Russian companies placed $15 billion abroad compared to $8 billion in 1999; and those are just the official figures. But for the Americans there is more to this than economics. The Republican administration does not like Moscow’s slide back to Soviet ways, recently highlighted by the Kremlin’s move against the independent media; nor is it too happy about Russia’s independent activities on the international stage, particularly its continued sale of weapons to countries such as Iran.

One thing is certain: Putin is not going to change his ways. He has built his reputation with the Russian public by being seen to be bullish in Russia’s interests: a strong central government which cracks down on crime and separatism, a revival in Russian military power and a hostility to any extension of NATO’s zone of influence. These are his prime policies. The result — along with all the peripherals, such as the fresh renaming of places after Soviet era personalities — is an apparent slide back to the USSR, and it inevitably put him on a collision course with the US.