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It was almost like the bad old days: a Russian leader at a big international summit unyielding in defence of his government's actions while berating western "aggression". All that was missing from Boris Yeltsin's performance in Istanbul on Thursday was the shoe Nikita Khrushchev famously used to bang on the table at the United Nations.
Russia would brook no foreign interference in its own affairs and would continue its bloody fight against terrorists in the northern Caucasus, Mr Yeltsin told western leaders across the summit table. Nato's air campaign against Serbia this year had constituted aggression justified on a pretext of concern about human rights.
Western governments in turn condemned Russia's military offensive in Chechnya, which they said was causing indiscriminate casualties and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
The exchanges seemed to exemplify a relationship between Moscow and the west that both Russian and US officials privately concede has deteriorated to its most ill-tempered since the end of the cold war. So when Mr Yeltsin walked out of the summit a day early, he left behind many questions not just about his motives but more fundamentally on the future of east-west relations.
Why, for example, did the Russian president talk so tough, when a few hours later his negotiators made potentially significant concessions on the international agreements under discussion at the summit? And why did Bill Clinton, the US president, sound so much more conciliatory than his European counterparts?
Some western officials interpreted Mr Yeltsin's performance as theatrics aimed at his domestic audience. But while playing to the gallery at home, he also likes to maintain some support in the west. Hence the concessions made by the Russian negotiators. These allow for a mission to travel to Chechnya from the 54-nation Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, raising the possibility (but only that) of a role for the body in an eventual solution to the conflict. The Russians also conceded a legitimate role for other OSCE governments, under certain circumstances, in the internal affairs of a country.
Mr Clinton refrained from joining the condemnation heaped on Russia by European leaders. He tried a personal appeal to Mr Yeltsin to make the point that foreign countries had a legitimate interest in Russia's affairs. If, instead of becoming president, Mr Yeltsin had been arrested after standing on a tank to defy the attempted coup in Moscow 1991 Mr Clinton said he hoped all the leaders present would have protested.
Sandy Berger, Mr Clinton's national security adviser, denied the president was giving his Russian counterpart an easier time than the Europeans and insisted he had made a forceful intervention, particularly in defence of Nato's action over Kosovo. But he implied there was a limit to what words alone could achieve: "We can stack up adjectives, I suppose, and see who has the bigger pile."
But some analysts believe there is a deeper motive behind Mr Clinton's tone. There is not much the US can do about Chechnya except to deplore it: cutting off International Monetary Fund loans and other aid would simply hurt US interests. But the Clinton administration does need something from Moscow that Europe does not want: adjustments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.
Moscow is sensitive to the prospect that the US might develop a national missile shield against ballistic missiles. But the US cannot do this without amending or abrogating the ABM treaty.
It is also important to recognise that modern Russia is a very different country from the Soviet Union. First, Russia is evolving as a rudimentary democracy and has its own four-year electoral cycle, which encourages more self-interested policies and inflamed rhetoric.
Vladimir Putin, the former KGB spy turned prime minister who is Mr Yeltsin's preferred heir, has pinned his entire political future - and Mr Yeltsin's hopes of a peaceful retirement - on the success of the Chechen campaign.
Second, modern Russia is not a monolithic political entity like the Soviet Union but contains many rival centres of influence, which are all fighting to determine the course of domestic and external policy. While some of these forces favour isolation from the west, others are still pressing for closer integration.
Maria Volkenstein, president of Validata, a research institute that monitors public opinion, says the Chechen conflict has transformed politics in Moscow. Before Chechnya, many voters believed Yevgeny Primakov, the popular, anti-Kremlin, former prime minister, was the best presidential candidate because he embodied the greatest hope for stability. But since the assault on Chechen "terrorists" allegiance has switched to Mr Putin as an effective agent of change.
"If the elections were held next Sunday there is no doubt what would happen," says Ms Volkenstein. "Putin would win. But Putin is only popular because of Chechnya and that makes his position very dangerous. He has only one rope supporting him and nothing else."
It is not only the Kremlin and Mr Putin that are deciding Russian policy towards Chechnya and the outside world. The once-proud army, which has been starved of funds for most of the decade and humiliated in the first Chechen war of 1994-96, has re-emerged as a powerful force in domestic politics. Many army officers remain antagonistic to the west and still believe wars lead to bigger budgets and greater prestige. Some of Russia's powerful oligarchs may also see advantage in fanning these nationalistic flames.
Igor Malashenko, first deputy chairman of Media-Most, Russia's largest commercial media group, observed this week that there was growing support for isolationism within Russia from a broad coalition of interests, ranging from nationalistic generals to powerful tycoons implicated in recent corruption scandals that have spread abroad.
"For them, the west is a thorn in the flesh," he said in a radio interview. "They want to create a regime in Russia that would act without looking back at the west over its shoulder and then their interests will be assured. I regard this as something extremely dangerous and harmful for the absolute majority of our fellow citizens."
However, even with such pressures, few observers foresee a complete rupture in relations between Russia and the west. "Of course Chechnya complicates relations and is a terrible blow to Russia's image in the West," says Eugene Rumer, a former US state department official. "But that does not automatically have to lead to a breakdown in relations.
"For the Russians, there is no longer any grand idea for which to fight and there are no means of fighting a new cold war. Besides, there are still a lot of people who recognise that it is in Russia's interests to have fundamentally good relations with Europe and the west."
Paradoxical as it sounds, some politicians in Moscow argue that Mr Putin could even serve as a "Trojan horse" for more internationalist-minded liberals in Russia. They believe he is committed to completing Mr Yeltsin's haphazard economic reforms and Russia's reintegration in the world. One Kremlin representative recently turned up in London touting the line that the former KGB officer was a civilised man of democratic principles and western values who was the best hope for further reform.
Such thinking remains hypothetical while there are so many obstacles in the way of improved relations between Russia and the west. Calmer heads are likely to prevail only once the Chechen conflict has been resolved, the US national missile debate has been played out, and presidential elections have been held in both Russia and the US.