Putin's busy 'election' agenda includes moving missiles and, in Syria, digging in

In the blur of a raucous week in the U.S. election campaign, it was easy to miss anongoing, much wider public relations offensive on the other side of the world.

Rarely do Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appearin foreign media interviews as often they have this past week. Even Russian ForeignMinister Sergei Lavrov gave a rare interview to CNN, outlining their common stance, inplain English.

Russia, clearly, has a message.

"I feel sorry for what is happening now in Russian-American relations,"said Lavrov. "Ican only reaffirm that it was not us who started this very unhealthy kind of relationship,and this started long before Ukraine, long before Syria."

Indeed it did, though how it started is up for debate.

But it is Syria Aleppo that has brought the simmering tension between the world's top two nuclear powers to a near boil-over, enough for international politicians and analyststo start publicly warning of the possibility of an outright U.S.-Russia war.

It's still far from that. But the rupture over Russian airstrikes in support of Syrian forcesin Aleppo is the lowest point in the world's bellwether relationship, and with the higheststakes, we're told, since the Cuban Missile Crisis,but already, far, far deadlier.

Unlike the 1962 crisis when the death of one pilot pulled the U.S. and the Soviet Unionback from the brink of all-out war the daily carnage in Syria seems to have failed topush the players enough to pull back from a slide to an even darker place.

Top Russian and US diplomats met with regional players Saturday, and as expected, afterfour and a half hours of talks, they had nothing substantive to report.

The war in Syria would rage on. The siege of Aleppo would hold.

Putin a busy man

After the latest ceasefire collapsed last month, the U.S. had suspended talks with Russia,calling for a war crimes investigation into Russian and Syrian airstrikes.

It also officially accused Russia of meddling in its election campaign, of hacking andleaking Democratic Party emails, and it promised to retaliate.

President Barack Obama also convened his top advisers to consider options for acting inSyria to try to stop the bombing. Having passed up red lines in the past, those options arenarrow without risking full confrontation with Russia.

Putin, meanwhile, has been a very busy man, on his own campaign to further limit thoseoptions, and further entrench Russia's presence in Syria.

Russia already had the upper hand in Syria, but it just moved S-300 anti-aircraft missilesthere, promising to shoot down U.S. planes if they threaten their Syrian allies.

AllowingRussiantroops to stay indefinitely

Russia's parliament voted to endorse a deal with Syria to allow an open-ended stay for itsmilitary.

Putin dropped or suspended nuclear-related pacts with the U.S. and accused it ofdeliberately targeting Syrian forces in a strike early in the ceasefire.

Russia also moved nuclear-capable missiles into Kaliningrad, its westernmost border,making its neighbours nervous (a move Moscow notes is on its own territory, and part ofa routine drill.)

Meanwhile, rival resolutions at the UN Security Council to end the fighting have failed onebecause of a Russian veto.

• Russia vetoes UN demand to end bombing of Aleppo

The lightning speed ofsuccession of all this speaks of Putin's apparent determination to setthe stage for the next U.S. presidency by establishing unmovable facts on theground facts the new president will urgently have to deal with.

The American public may still call Barack Obama president, but Putin has already movedon.

"[Russia] is going after its goals with a great deal more assertiveness, aggression,conviction than has ever been the case," says James Nixey, head of the Russia andEurasia program at London's Chatham House.

"The election in North America, the Brexit situation, does mean that resources arediverted, attention is distracted and that does give Russia a vacuum in which it canoperate. And of course Russia is the more committed actor."

And that brings us back to the PR offensive, which in the past days has also taken Putinto Turkey and India.

Putin echoed in turn by Lavrov and Assad in their own interviews insisted in aninterview with a French network that the blame for the tension and the Mideast chaosfalls squarely on the West, and chiefly the U.S.

He also insisted that the fight in Aleppo which has included strikes on hospitals and anaid convoy is about rooting out terrorists hiding among civilians.

Assad, for his part, insisted that "cleaning" Aleppo is key to an overall defeat of thoseopponents.

More than a Cold War

He also acknowledged in an interview with a Russian paper that his country has becomea key theatre for the U.S. and Russia rivalry to play out.

"What we have now is something like more than Cold War, less than war, or full-blown war."

• APutinkind of year inMideast

In that one narrow point, he is right. When U.S. aircraft are being threatened, whenWashington is again considering military action in Syria and when there'sconsternation over a Russian aircraft carrier passing through the English Channel en routeto Syria it's a lot more than a Cold War.

In the meantime, it is an offensive in pursuit of a geopolitical reset that would put Russiahigher up the world's power hierarchy, says Nixey.

"He wants to be involved in all matters of international affairs and be given a say,"saysNixey.

"They asked for equality equality means equality with the other great power: the U.S."