Of course Tony Blair tried to bring Vladimir Putin into the liberal democratic fold

New releases from the National Archives remind us that the world was different in 2001, writes John Rentoul

Blair’s proposal was that Russia should continue to be given ‘a position on the top table’ (PA)

It was not a secret that Tony Blair wanted to engage with Vladimir Putin when Putin was first elected leader of Russia in 1999. There was a minor controversy at the time, because Blair broke the convention against meeting foreign politicians during elections, and met Putin in Russia during the election campaign that he was expected to win.

Blair hoped that by establishing early good relations with the Russian prime minister, he could help bind the country into the liberal democratic international community. Given what has happened since, it is no surprise that some of the documents released today by the National Archives have attracted some headlines for the jarring contrast between the hopes of 2001 and the reality of Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine today.

Yet the papers should also serve to remind us that Blair saw the dangers of Russian nationalism and was ahead of most other world leaders in trying to do something about them. Whereas the US and other countries tended to assume that Russia would adopt Western values and enrich itself by transitioning to a functioning market economy – as most of central and eastern Europe did – Blair warned that Putin was “a Russian patriot, acutely aware that Russia had lost its respect in the world”.