How do you solve a problem like Russia?

Charles Grant, director of the CER, said that while Putin's personal relationship with Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, was famously bad, David Cameron was said to have developed a pragmatic working relationship with the Russian leader. Foreign ministers William Hague and Sergei Lavrov also "got on well" together. But such bonhomie did not prevent the hurtful sneer at last month's St Petersburg summit, attributed by some to Putin, that Britain was "a small island that no one listens to". ...The CER's Grant said the EU possessed other levers to counteract Russian over-assertiveness. They included Brussels' insistence that Moscow observe the EU's energy market rules, and the prospective launch by the European commission of a multi-billion dollar anti-trust case against the Russian energy giant, Gazprom.