In Russian Trip, Obama to Take On Power Equation

MOSCOW — The summit meeting here this week revolves around two men with some notable affinities. Presidents Obama and Dmitri A. Medvedev are relatively young leaders who represent a new generation of post-cold-war leadership, who once taught law and embrace the Internet. (Mr. Medvedev even has a video blog.)

One difference stands out, though: Mr. Obama is the undisputed head of his nation. Mr. Medvedev? Well, that is a bit more complicated, and is a significant problem for the Obama administration as it prepares for discussions on Monday.

Mr. Medvedev holds the highest office in Russia, so protocol dictates that Mr. Obama meet and negotiate nuclear arms control and other matters with him. Yet questions about Mr. Medvedev’s authority hang over the summit meeting like an awkward familial arrangement that everyone acknowledges but no one knows how to handle.

Mr. Obama himself waded into the issue on Thursday when he made a pointed remark about Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who is Mr. Medvedev’s mentor and is widely assumed to be Russia’s real ruler.

Mr. Obama said that Mr. Putin, the former president, had “one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new.” Mr. Obama said that it was time to move forward and that Mr. Medvedev “understands that.”

The comment suggested that Mr. Obama was trying to build up Mr. Medvedev, who the Americans say they believe may be easier to deal with than Mr. Putin.

American officials said that Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev met at the Group of 8 summit meeting in London in April and that they seemed to hit it off. But the officials said they feared that Mr. Putin stood in the way.

Mr. Obama also may have been trying to protect his own domestic political flank, anticipating criticism that he is too easy on the Kremlin.

Mr. Putin, who is often quick with a retort when criticized, seemed to go out of his way on Friday not to take offense at Mr. Obama’s comment.

“We stand firmly on our feet and always look to the future,” Mr. Putin said. He said he was awaiting Mr. Obama’s visit with “very warm feelings.”

Still, the strategy of empowering Mr. Medvedev might be difficult to carry out, and it might even backfire. Mr. Medvedev might respond by emphatically moving closer to Mr. Putin to avoid the appearance of being influenced by Mr. Obama.

Well aware of those dynamics, the White House seems to be hedging its bets. So while Mr. Obama is spending several hours with Mr. Medvedev on Monday, he is scheduled to have breakfast with Mr. Putin the next day.

Speculation about where the power lies in the Putin-Medvedev tandem began as soon as Mr. Medvedev took office last year after being endorsed by Mr. Putin, who was barred by term limits from running again. But the uncertainty has taken on added urgency now that Mr. Obama has pledged to “reset” relations.

David J. Kramer, a Russian specialist who was a senior diplomat in the administration of President George W. Bush, said Mr. Obama’s remark on Thursday appeared to indicate a degree of exasperation over Mr. Putin’s continued prominence.

“You have to do business with Medvedev, and then you have to do the same business with Putin, and you may get a different answer,” Mr. Kramer said. “You can’t do one without the other. It may be a frustration, wishing that Medvedev were more powerful. But certainly the flip side of this is that Putin is not just lurking in the background, but is very much at the forefront of the summit.”

Some analysts said that searching for a schism between Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Putin was a fool’s errand, asserting that the men governed as staunch partners and that there had been no evidence that Mr. Medvedev wanted to go his own way. (Nor is it even clear that he could.)

Most agreed that, in the end, it did not matter whether Mr. Medvedev or Mr. Putin was in the room with Mr. Obama because both would hew to the same policies, whether on arms control, terrorism, Afghanistan, Iran or other topics.

“It is a bureaucratic consensus,” said Sergey M. Rogov, director of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies in Moscow. “There is an agreement on the Russian position on all key issues, and summits are not normally the stage for improvisation.”

Under Russia’s Constitution, the president controls foreign policy. But the reality can be different, as was illustrated by the recent collapse of Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organization.

Mr. Medvedev, who has sought to portray himself as an economic reformer, pushed hard for Russia’s entry in the group. The United States and the European Union relied on the assurances of Mr. Medvedev’s aides that the bid was genuine, and the Obama administration got behind it.

But last month, Mr. Putin abruptly announced that Russia was abandoning the effort and that it would try instead to join the trade organization in conjunction with two other former Soviet republics, Belarus and Kazakhstan. American and European officials were caught off guard, and even some of Mr. Medvedev’s own aides were said to have been blindsided by Mr. Putin.

Mr. Putin’s move was interpreted as a signal that he was ultimately in charge of the most important decisions.

“Some Russians see it as a message from Putin to the American government, saying, ‘I’m the decider and I can, at any time, make a decision to overrule anything else that’s been going on in our negotiations if I’m not satisfied,’ ” said Stephen Sestanovich, a longtime Russia expert and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“This is something that is going to be a game that the American side will be trying to figure out, but it will not be easy to completely understand,” Mr. Sestanovich said. “Putin knows that given Medvedev’s position, he’s the guy who deals with foreign leaders. But Putin wants to find ways of reminding everybody of who’s really in charge.”

Germany has often been a bridge between Russia and the United States in recent years, and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has determined that it has no choice but to work with both Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev, said Hans-Henning Schröder, a Russia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.

Mr. Schröder said that after eight years as president, Mr. Putin probably did not miss having to carry out all the job’s formal duties. (Mr. Medvedev, in fact, just returned from a trip to Namibia and elsewhere in Africa.)

“Putin would mind if he were insecure, and if he did not think that he is the one really in power,” Mr. Schröder said. “You could say that now, one of them is making the decisions, and one of them is doing the ceremonies.”