Bush and Putin in Chile, November 2004. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
George Bush spends Thursday, his last day in Europe, meeting Vladimir Putin in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava. On this side of the Atlantic the almost universal view of the visit is that it is intended to heal damage done to the US-European alliance over Iraq by way of showing commitment to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
In the US it looks a little different. The Washington Post and New York Times both led their coverage on Mr Bush's warning that Russia "must renew a commitment to democracy and the rule of law". Although he said also that its future lay within "the transatlantic community", the statement put Russia in the same camp as Syria and Iran of nations receiving censure, though less harshly. Still, it is not hard to imagine the meeting will be frostier than those in the days he called Mr Putin "Pootie-Poot". When you factor in Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's orange president, telling a Nato summit he wants to join the alliance (interesting because Russia stations its Black sea fleet in Sevastopol) it adds up to a bad week for the Kremlin.
