Many observers date the end of the cold war to the fall of the Berlin Wall a decade ago. Others mark it at midnight on December 31st, 1991 when the red flag with its hammer, sickle and star slid down the Kremlin flagpole for the final time. The news from Moscow yesterday suggests that, in both cases, an element of wishful thinking was involved. The Russian foreign minister, Mr Igor Ivanov, has claimed that links with the United States will not be affected by the arrest of Ms Cheri Leberknight, a second secretary at the US embassy. Her brief detention, however, marks the lowest point in relations between the two countries since the dissolution of the USSR.
Ms Leberknight was arrested by the FSB, the internal security successor to the KGB, and taken to the Lubyanka accused of espionage, before being handed into her embassy's custody. She is the first American diplomat so accused since the Soviet Union came to an end. Her arrest, coming as it does at a time when a US naval petty-officer faces charges of spying for Russia, brings back memories of the tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and journalists commonplace in the cold war era.
It is generally recognised that many larger countries place spies in some of their embassies. Earlier this year a list of British MI6 agents who have posed as diplomats was published on the Internet. It is also sometimes the case that local security authorities know the identities of the foreign spies in their midst and do not interfere unless they suspect a major breach of security or when there is political point to be scored. Relations between Russia and the United States have deteriorated since the expansion of NATO eastwards, its military action in Kosovo and the west's apparent disregard for the United Nations Security Council of which Russia is a permanent veto-carrying member.
Western criticism of Russia's military campaign in Chechnya has further heightened tension. American politicians have recognised that relations with Moscow are at a low ebb. A "Who lost Russia?" debate has already become part of the campaign for next year's Presidential election in the United States. Without attempting to prejudge the Leberknight case it should be noted that while President Yeltsin contributed with a will to the destruction of many Soviet institutions, the KGB was merely re-organised. FSB operatives are, in the main, old KGB hands. Their attitudes to espionage can differ significantly from those held elsewhere.
The trial of Mr Alexander Nikitin for high treason, currently in progress in St Petersburg, is a case in point. His crime, the FSB alleges, was to provide information on Russia's northern fleet to the Norwegian environmental agency Bellona, even though this information was already in the public domain. Although Russia's constitution states that citizens are innocent until proved guilty this provision has not filtered through to a judicial system which still operates under Soviet regulations. Mr Nikitin will be asked to prove his innocence. Ms Leberknight will probably be asked to leave Russia. Relations between Russia and western countries will slide further.