MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Dmitry Kosyrev.)-- Amid natural satisfaction in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin's clearly successful visit to Spain, big questions arise as to the essence of Russia's relations with the Europeans.
On the one hand, Putin has successfully promoted a close relationship between Russia and not only Spanish leaders - both the King and the Prime Minister - but also Italy, the Netherlands, France, and Germany - in the latter case, as recent experience shows, even irrespective of who is in power there.
On the other, European institutions have generated a strong and competent, though largely unofficial, opinion in Moscow that they do not know how to deal with Russia and, most importantly, few people there would like to. Russians are wondering how the whole can be so much less than the sum of its parts.
The answer, however, seems to be simple enough. Disillusioned about Russia's intentions regarding Europe, which he thought would be to "fit in", reshaping its values and standards into the European mould, a conceptual European is said to be totally confused to see the Eastern neighbor have - and aggressively seek to promote - its own standards, assessments, and attitudes. What the Eastern neighbor wants is not to fit in with an existing community but change it into a new one, including with its independent thoughts on Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and other issues.
The essence of Putin's explicit message sent before and during his Madrid visit is that standing on the cutting edge of the freedom of speech - the cornerstone of the European mindset - is not the same as drawing short-minded and offensive cartoons of prophets of other religions. Before thinking of doing something like that, one should think about possible repercussions first. In a clear sign of promoting political sanity, the Russian leader has highlighted the idea of an "alliance of civilizations" in Madrid, an advance of the former Iranian President Mohammad Hattami's call for "dialog of civilizations." One move in that direction was his declared intention to invite the leaders of Hamas, the winners of the recent Palestinian election who are seen as terrorists by the United States and European Union, to Moscow.
At the end of the day, Moscow, unlike the West, appears to be a neutral player in all the calamities of the past days: Iran's nuclear standstill, the cartoon scandal and Palestinian elections. Madrid also seems to be looking for a way out of the current state that leads one to draw a reasonable comparison between Europe's looming deadlock on Russia with the quagmire Europe and the West in general are already in with the Muslim world. In both cases, the "conceptual Westerner" who sees himself as a civilizational standard-bearer sets himself to play against all others who unsurprisingly know better.
Two spider's webs, however, seems to be somewhat more than the EU can afford right now, which puts the Spanish leaders into a position to do everyone a lot of good, and themselves first of all, by negotiating with Putin to help find a solution. This meeting should be seen as an example of two countries located on different sides of Europe proving themselves capable of setting up an agenda all Europeans could use to their benefit. A full-fledged state visit, after all, is as much about long-term bilateral perspectives as about tactical and pragmatic issues.
His Majesty Juan Carlos said in his official greeting that Spain was assured of the profound importance of maintaining a strategically prospective Russia-EU relationship and confident that Russia, as a leading global player and this year's G8 chair, would help resolve key challenges today's world is facing.
This is a message of bilateral outreach. While Spain would welcome support in its ascent to the G8, Russia needs help in engineering a stable relationship with the EU as an entity and Europe as a civilization. In economics, the two sides also seem poised to break beyond the bars of the old-fashioned oil-for-wine agenda and start talking of joint space research, investment projects, and other promising issues.
With many technicalities left unsolved after this visit, the great question amid the overall success remains: whether two countries need to be separated by the rest of Europe to find a common ground so easily?
Well, maybe they need what Russia and Spain have: a historically shaped deep understanding of how to deal with people of a different disposition. In this department, Spain has probably learnt as many lessons from its Latin American experience as Russia from its contacts with Central and other Asias - often controversial but putting both explicitly European powers in an excellent position to push ahead for an "alliance of civilizations."
