US: As US election day approaches, the Kremlin appears to have overcome its fierce opposition to the war in Iraq and decided, as far as Washington is concerned, to follow a policy of "better the devil you know", writes Daniel McLaughlin
While other world leaders remain coy as to who they are backing in next Tuesday's poll, President Vladimir Putin has made his preference clear by equating victory for Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry to a triumph for "international terrorism".
"International terrorism has as its goal the inflicting of the greatest possible damage on President Bush, preventing him from being re-elected to a second term," Mr Putin said recently. "If they achieve their goal, it will give international terrorism a new impulse and extra power." Mr Putin's allies, who control Russia's parliament, security services and most influential media outlets, rushed to give their own backing to Mr Bush's campaign, and strike a chord with many ordinary Russians who have a lingering distrust of the Democrats.
Former president Bill Clinton's administration is remembered for giving Moscow the lessons in privatisation and the free market that created the "oligarchs", a coterie of businessmen who used their connections and business savvy to grab Russia's finest state assets at a fraction of their real price, subsequently sending much of their huge wealth abroad.
Mr Putin, a former KGB officer, came to power promising to "destroy the oligarchs as a class", and bring stability to a nation wracked by financial chaos and periodic collapse since capitalism arrived in the 1990s.
Since president Jimmy Carter's time, the Democrats have been seen as likely to meddle more deeply that the Republicans in Moscow's affairs, with a tendency to show an often-discomfiting interest in the state of civil society and human rights.
While Mr Bush has avoided personally criticising Mr Putin - leaving it to the State Department to question rights abuses in Chechnya, moves to limit democracy and the attack on the Yukos oil firm of billionaire oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky - Mr Kerry used a televised debate with his opponent to mention: "Mr Putin now controls all the television stations. His political opposition is being put in jail."
The key factor for Mr Putin, analysts say, is that Mr Bush has accepted Chechnya's separatist conflict as a front in the "international war on terror", and will not back European criticism of rights abuses or calls for a negotiated settlement with rebels.
"Mr Putin least of all wants to change partners in the middle of the war on terror," says political commentator Mr Vladimir Simonov.