This might be a strange moment to make such a statement, but I genuinely feel that Maltese-Russian relations simply cannot be kept on the back burner. This is a deficiency that a new Labour government will try to address.

We feel that we have lost any momentum – if it ever existed under a Nationalist government – to nurture our links with this important country at both a political and economic level. When I visited Moscow and St Petersburg as part of a Foreign and European Affairs Committee delegation, I felt that there were many opportunities that were being missed or left by the wayside.

The same can be said for relations with Japan, which have hardly featured at all on this government’s political/economic radar since the days of Prof. Josef Bonnici.

But today I shall limit myself to Maltese-Russian relations.

It is true that relations between Russia and both the EU and the US were never as strained as they are now, but this should not impede us from fostering and developing our relations on a bilateral level.

Following the traumatic leaderships of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, when these two Russian leaders were far more liked in the West than they were in their own countries – for reasons long publicly known – the Russians needed an assertive type of leadership. And I personally think that they found it in Vladimir Putin, irrespective of what many might think of some of his policies and public stances.

After years of being knocked about because of their political weakness and an economy teetering on collapse, they have been relying on what they term as “sovereign democracy” since 2004, which is a polite way of saying that they are sovereign, that they make their own decisions, that they govern their own fate and that no one is going to tell them what to do.

This does not mean that the international community should relinquish its obligations. but one has to try and understand the Russian psyche too, warts and all.

We are at a stage where both Bush and Putin are nearing the end of their terms and, in fact, Putin’s successor is supposed to be elected in March. Speculation has already started being fuelled that even though he will not run for the presidency, there is no guarantee that he will not stay on as a “national leader” and run again in 2012. Which, I understand, is something their Constitution permits. But that is purely an internal Russian affair for them to settle on their own.

What is important is that whether or not one classifies Russia as a superpower, there are certain realities we cannot ignore.

Primarily that it is a major supplier of energy to Europe and that Europe is Russia’s biggest trading partner.

Former Italian Premier Berlusconi was one who kept this point firmly in mind. Until recently, so did Tony Blair, although obviously at the moment UK-Russian relations are no doubt clouded by the political fall-out resulting from the murder of Russian defector Litvinenko.

I hold no brief for the Russians and am in no way implying that I agree with all their actions, but as an American analyst from Harvard’s Davis Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies recently argued quite rightly, in Russia there is a chip on the shoulder about a lot of their interactions with the West, that when Russia was down and weak “we” (ie the West) did very little to help, but rather systematically sought to buttress our positions at Russia’s expense. Now Russia is making it clear that it is back and that it is not going to tolerate this any longer.

While it would be ideal for any country to have the kind of political system we dream of, this has already proved to be a mistaken strategy in the Middle East. The same can be said for Russia. We cannot forget that history has shown that there is in the Russian soul this yearning for a strong man – even a czar-like leader, if you want to say so – something that might even date back to the monarchic approach to leadership in the country of czarist days.

Unless we take stock of this mindset we cannot even begin to seriously think about putting our socio-economic and political relations on the higher plane that they deserve.

One thing is certain. With Putin’s assertiveness in

foreign policy, the biggest

mistake we can make is to ignore Russia as if it did not exist.

This is the impression I got when I was in Russia and it is my feeling today too. And by “we” I mean specifically Malta.

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Leo Brincat is opposition spokesman on foreign

affairs and IT