What put Putin on a collision route with the West if in the 2000s he went along with us and even seemed to like west?

FROM:

https://www.quora.com/What-put-Putin-on-a-collision-route-with-the-West-if-in-the-2000s-he-went-along-with-us-and-even-seemed-to-like-west

Dima Vorobiev, Former Soviet propaganda executive

Updated Jun 12, 2020

One of the considerations (not the main one, though) on the part of oligarchs who put Putin on the throne in 1999, was his image of a “KGB liberal”.

Putin came into politics as a fixer for the liberal mayor of St. Petersburg. He worked superbly with Western investors in the city. He spent some time in Europe. He was a known Germanofil and built a decent international business network in the 1990s. He had never been known for xenophobia or anti-Semitism. Besides, KGB traditionally had an image of people who know how to see eye-to-eye with Western bourgeois guys, when necessary.

Putin looked like a perfect man for building bridges from Russia westward.

Therefore, his explicit mandate included finding a way to get Western recognition for Russian oligarchical fortunes, irrespective of their provenance (Project Londongrad). Oligarchs held in the 1990s their part of the bargain, preventing Communists from re-taking power and aligning with the West on global issues. Now, they wanted the West to acknowledge their effort. They required an equal place at the G-8 table of global power.

This is where Putin’s inquiry about the NATO membership in 2000 came from, as well as several hints from his aides at joining the EU. This is also why he was the first to call Bush and offered him help after 9/11. This is also why he agreed to the NATO military logistics bases not only in Central Asia, but also in Ulyanovsk in Russia (“American military boots trampling the Russian soil!” was the line from our radical nationalists at the time).

Then, the following happened:

• NATO accepted the Baltics as new members
• USA withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and 'revealed an intent of deploying new ABM systems in Central Europe
• USA invaded Iraq, in spite of Putin’s vehement objections
• Pro-Western Rose revolution happened in Georgia in 2003
• Orange Revolution happened in Ukraine in 2005 and prevented a pro-Russian president from taking office
• Oil price skyrocketed and filled the Russian state budget to a degree unprecedented in our history, see the graph below

From which Putin made the following conclusions:

1. It doesn’t pay to be nice with the US and NATO
2. The US and NATO try to find a way to get rid of him
3. He needs to set up a watertight perimeter preventing outside forces from “color revolutions” against him
4. Everything is happening because no one cared to formalize the terms of the Soviet surrender in 1991. The good news is that it opens for renegotiating the outcome of the Cold war!
5. Russia has money to stand up against the West and push forward a revision of the Cold war’s outcome.
6. The West must accept a New Yalta deal with Putin—not in exchange for some new favors from Putin, but as compensation for Russia’s past favors in 1990–2005.