There was no sensation, no breakthrough. Yet without a doubt, "Putin's five points," as outlined in Monday's televised statement and Tuesday's speech before the Bundestag, were important and long-awaited news.

Russia staked out its place specifically within the Western anti-terrorist camp, not just next to it. A concrete position was chosen, despite the obvious desire of our diplomats to take their favorite approach of trying to kill two birds with one stone, which quickly disintegrated into a humiliating shuttling between two belligerents with proposals of mediation.

For the second time in the last 10 years, Russia has joined a coalition of Western civilized states against Asian dictatorship and fundamentalism. What's more, Vladimir Putin has gone farther than Mikhail Gorbachev, despite the fact that Operation Noble Eagle is much more vague than Desert Storm. The cynical tongues insist that Russia's military and political elite was seized by the desire to play around in a new war – something of an open recognition, I suppose, that we helped, are helping, and will continue to help the Northern Alliance.

We waited for Putin's speech, not only because information about an initiative leaked from the Kremlin walls. No, we waited because the geographic location of Russia and its Asian allies requires the United States and NATO to secure Moscow's support for any military operations in the region. And the West got what it wanted – agreement on the use of airspace, cooperation on intelligence and proposals on the cooperative creation of a new system of collective security.

The only surprise was Putin's statement that airspace would be open only for humanitarian flights. But one has to assume that such details were more for internal than external consumption. However, this time around that particular detail is especially significant, if not crucial.

For several days before Putin's series of statements, sources were insisting that a real sensation was being prepared for the president's European trip. A super-sensation, they said. And they were not referring to the opening of airspace or the use of bases and infrastructure by NATO forces. The Russian leader looked as if he was going to propose fundamentally new initiatives of the kind that would outline a new world order – initiatives that would develop and give shape specifically to those ideas that, until now, Washington had been espousing to alone.

Moscow was reportedly ready to propose a new Yalta conference, and had some preliminary drafts about a fundamental restructuring of the United Nations and other powerful international organizations that have long turned into groups of highly paid bureaucrats who are unwilling to make real decisions or take real responsibility.

Instead of this new international league of nations, what eventually emerged was an important, but certainly not earth-shattering statement that "currently existing security-coordinating bodies don't allow Russia to participate in the decision-making process. Today, many decisions are made without us, and we are asked to support them. Is that real partnership? We have failed to recognize the changes that have taken place over the past 10 years. We speak of partnership, but in reality fail to trust one another. Despite an abundance of sweet talk, we persistently resist one another."

The last paragraph is undoubtedly fair from the point of view of international relations, which to this day retain all the characteristics of the Cold War era. But it is even more precise in describing Russia's political elite, the president's circle, and Putin himself.

The serious conclusion drawn from the two-week Kremlin musings that led to moderate compromising initiatives is that most of Russia's political elite is not ready for a whole new level of relations with the West and, more specifically, the United States. Moreover, the consensus is gone from the very core of the Russian leader's Cabinet. A close examination of the events that took place in Russia after the Sept. 11 catastrophe leads to another disconcerting conclusion: Putin still has no tight team that is ready to forego disagreements with its own favored position in order to execute the goals set by the country's leader.

The hierarchy of power, which Putin built over the first year and a half of his presidency, and which proved quite effective in fighting disloyal politicians, governors, and businessmen, simply crumbled in the face of a real crisis. It could not cope with the need to quickly develop a fundamentally new policy. Even when new initiatives appeared, and it became obvious that their implementation could secure Russia an authentic right to call itself a creator of international political thought, the hierarchy failed to protect the innovators from the pressure of conservative critics.

The president could have taken a radical position – something international policy consultants and image-makers urged him to do. With a 70 percent approval rating, it would seem that he has the freedom to demonstrate his willpower and oppose the political elite. Especially since most of the establishment is like tumbleweed – its members will gladly trade their positions to directly opposing ones should they feel that Putin so desires.

If Putin had chosen the radical path, he would have been risking an insignificant political crisis of an internal rather than public nature, but the upside would have been a momentous breakthrough on an international arena, a breakthrough that would have helped Russia solve a number of strategic foreign policy and foreign economic problems without losing self-respect and without succumbing to humiliating trade-offs.