WITH just over a week to go before Barack Obama takes over the US presidency, it's obvious that the charismatic senator from Illinois is set fair to be the main mover and shaker of 2009. For a start he's moving into the world's most covetable address, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Then there's the not-so-little matter of the fact that he's not George W Bush. That counts for a lot, and great things are expected of Obama, provided always that he doesn't suffer from vertigo.

But just as life abhors a vacuum, so too is it impossible for any of the world's leaders to exist at the pinnacle in complete isolation. There's always another guy scrabbling away just below to share the top billing. On the other side of the world that bold backpacker is the inscrutable Vladimir Putin, a leader for whom the concept of being second best just doesn't exist. As he showed last week when he took the decision to cut off Russian gas supplies, for him policy is a case of all or nothing. Black is black and white is white and compromise is the work of the devil.

In theory Putin is Russia's prime minister and is therefore subordinate to President Dmitry Medvedev, but that's like saying that because Manchester United and Manchester City operate in the same city they are on a par on the football pitch. Try telling that to Sir Alex Ferguson. The truth is that Putin is the only leader who means a damn in Russia and in that guise he entertains messianic ambitions to recover his country's status as a world superpower. His hopes are not without foundation.

As a former KGB officer his attitude to the west is one of suspicion at best and contempt at worst. Every time western Europe took steps to extend their influence towards the Urals through the enlargement of Nato and the EU, Putin bridled. He opposed the invasion of Iraq (good for him) and he is not exactly enamoured of US plans to base a missile shield in Russia's back yard. All this will make him a formidable opponent for Obama and his new secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and it's doubtful they will be given the same easy ride afforded to their predecessors.

Like the rest of the capitalist world the US finds itself enfeebled by avaricious bankers and politicians who were prepared to go along with the idea that greed is good. On the other hand, until recently Russia seemed to have weathered much of the storm, thanks to its gas and oil reserves and to its burgeoning internal economy. Turning off the tap was as good a way as any of sticking up two fingers to the rest of the world, and Putin knew it. It used to be said that when the US sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold, but now it's a case that when Russia gets the huff the rest of Europe freezes.

This is politics as they would have been understood by Joseph Stalin and it came as little surprise that the ghastly old dictator was recently voted Russia's third most influential leader. He lost by a whisker to Prince Alexander Nevsky, the thirteenth-century leader who repulsed the Germans (lots of brownie points there), but the very fact that Stalin has been rehabilitated in this way points to a new Russian mindset. Recently school text books have been altered to reinforce his capability as a wartime leader and to airbrush out the gulags and the mass killings, and just before 2008 came to an end an important archive in St Petersburg detailing Stalin's record as an oppressor disappeared into police custody.

So far Putin has avoided any overt reference to Stalin but his admirers and his detractors have not been slow to mention both men in the same breath. That's not so surprising. There has always been a Russian tendency to look for a strong leader - the very size of the country and its racial mix demands a centralist tendency - but now that need might be more crucial than ever before. Although Russia has managed to ride the world economic downturn, it is not immune from the after-shock.

The rouble has slumped by 15 per cent against the dollar, the stock market has plummeted, unemployment is rising and last week the police used the big stick against demonstrators in Vladivostok. Either that's a case of welcome to the real world, or it's a sign of trouble ahead. How Putin reacts to the crisis will be the mark of him as a leader. He can stamp out the trouble as the Georgian from Grozny did in the 1930s, or he can prove that he's his own man and emerge as a world leader second to none.