Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev have inherited the long and complicated US-Russia relationship. AP'

Описание: (2 Jul 2009) HEADLINE: US, Russia poised to restart relationship
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CAPTION: Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev have inherited the long and complicated US-Russia relationship. AP's former Moscow bureau chief Steve Hurst looks at how the leaders plan to improve relations. (July 2)
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[Notes:ANCHOR VOICE]
Here's the question President Barack Obama faces when he turns up in Moscow: Who really holds the levers of power _ Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, or Dmitry Medvedev, the president?
SOT James Collins/Former US Ambassador to Russia
"I think it's certainly a reality that Prime Minister Putin and is a major factor in Rusian decision making and former ambassador to Russia. the determination of Russian policy."
Obama has slotted in a breakfast with Putin, even though protocol does not demand the U.S. head of state even meet with the prime minister.
SOT Masha Lipman/Carnegie Moscow Center
"It would be wrong not to meet with Putin at all since he is the top decision maker. So I guess this is a delicate dance and Obama should find a way to dance it."
For presidents past _ no such puzzles. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Boris Yeltsin held the Russian reins in his testing-the-waters meeting with the first president Bush.
Yeltsin, well entrenched by then, famously had Bill Clinton nearly doubled over with laughter. Then came Putin who was to become Russia's strong-man president but had said in his early days in power that he wanted a new start with the United States.
But much intervened, especially the Russian war with Georgia, the former Soviet republic, and Russia's refusal to unite with Washington against Iran and its nuclear ambitions.
SOT/James Collins/Former US Ambassador to Russia
"Relations were at their worst since really the beginning of the Gorbachev era."
Obama administration officials privately downplay
Putin's role as Medvedev's puppet master. And Obama, who's already met with his Russian counterpart, plans to spend far more time with Medvedev than Putin.
The Russian's see it differently. What worries them right now is their economy...10 percent unemployment. Putin runs that show for sure and recently showed his muscles, road to the rescue...so to speak...when the unemployed at a big cement factory blocked the highway from Moscow to Leningrad demanding back pay and the reopening of the plant.
Obviously trying to deflect blame for the country's deep recession, Putin ... on television ... berated one of the country's wealthiest men _ Oleg Deripaska _ and forced him to sign an agreement to pay back wages and reopen
the factory. Putin lashed Deripaska...one of his most loyal supporters among Russia's newly and famously rich:"You have made thousands of people hostages to your bloated ambitions, inefficiency and, possibly, greed. It cannot be tolerated."
It was public display of the kind of toughness
Putin has become well-known for and was played out far more brutally than, say, Obama's ouster of General Motors top leader as the company sought more bailout money before heading into bankruptcy.
While U.S. and Russian officials speak hopefully Steve Hurst, AP, Moscow
about what Obama calls pressing the restart button
on U.S. Russian relations, it is altogether clear
that Putin has written the Russian script.
And his grip on real power in the country, his willingness to play extreme hardball, might leave planners of Obama's first Kremlin summit a bit disappointed.
Steve Hurst, the Associated Press, Moscow

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