When President Clinton meets President Putin in Moscow at the weekend the main issue, ostensibly, will be Russia's fierce opposition to NMD, the US's proposed defence shield against nuclear attacks from "rogue nations" such as Libya, Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
But following allegations by the French newspaper Le Monde that Mr Putin had links with a German company whose co-founder has been charged with money-laundering and organised crime, a great deal of attention will focus on the Russian President's personality.
On the nuclear front Russia does not believe for a moment that the NMD shield is being designed to protect the United States from countries whose missiles are incapable in any event of reaching the American continent. It regards the moves as a blatant breach of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (ABM) and has declared its stance on that treaty "immutable".
Mr Clinton has failed in his eight years in office to sign a major arms reduction agreement with Russia. He will arrive in Moscow as a lame-duck President and is increasingly likely to leave a decision on NMD to his successor.
The Moscow summit is unlikely, therefore, to bring about any concrete results in the main area on which the talks will centre. Whether it will help give the Americans a clearer picture of Mr Putin's character is another matter.
In recent days, three main indications as to Mr Putin's intentions have emerged. First, he has come to be regarded as an undoubted centralist attempting to concentrate power in the hands of a presidency already far more powerful than in any Western democracy.
There are indications, too, that media criticism will not be tolerated, while his selection of personnel for cabinet and other posts indicates that links with the shady Kremlin group known as "The Family" will be maintained.
Mr Putin's main move in concentrating power has been to divide Russia into seven territories to replace the often chaotic system which evolved under Mr Yeltsin.
Under legislation which gained overwhelming initial backing in the lower house of parliament yesterday, Mr Putin will be able to sack elected regional governors, dissolve regional assemblies and deprive governors of their seats in the Federation Council, the upper house of the national parliament.
These proposals are linked to a decree appointing seven presidential envoys to ensure that Mr Putin's rule is unchallenged in the new super-regions. Most Russians agree that something needs to be done about the vast country's unwieldy system of government and the plan has strong support.
There are concerns, however, about the calibre of those chosen by Mr Putin as his envoys to the new regions. Two of them are former KGB officers, two are army generals, one is a former Interior Ministry official, one is a former diplomat and only one, former prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko, is a politician.
In his own home region Mr Putin has appointed Gen Viktor Cherkesov, one-time head of the investigative department of the Leningrad KGB. In that position Gen Cherkesov prepared cases against people who distributed books by Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak and Nabokov and was responsible for the imprisonment of a number of the city's intellectuals for "anti-Soviet activities". President Gorbachev later pardoned most of these.
Appointments to central political office are equally worrying. Mr Putin's new Prime Minister, Mr Mikhail Kasyanov, is known to have links to the sinister oligarch and media mogul, Mr Boris Berezovsky, and "The Family". A majority of the new cabinet is believed to have "Family" links and the quiet reappointment of Mr Alexander Voloshin as Mr Putin's chief of staff indicates that "The Family" has retained its power in the Kremlin.
Mr Voloshin's hold on Mr Putin is such that, according to the Russian media, he recently persuaded the president to scrap the appointment of Mr Dmitri Kozak from St Petersburg as prosecutor general, and appoint Mr Vladimir Ustinov in his place. Mr Ustinov had not been noted for his enthusiasm in pursuing Kremlin insiders.
In Switzerland at least one prosecutor has taken a different stance. It emerged yesterday that a Geneva investigating magistrate, Mr Daniel Devaud, planned to charge Kosovo-Albanian businessman Beghjet Pacolli with money-laundering and membership of a criminal organisation. The charges are connected with the renovation of the Grand Kremlin Palace in which Mr Putin was inaugurated.
Mr Devaud also has issued an international arrest warrant against former Kremlin property manager Mr Pavel Borodin, and claimed this week that he had assembled enough evidence to secure a conviction. It was at Mr Borodin's invitation that Mr Putin left the relative obscurity of St Petersburg politics and took his first job in the Kremlin. Mr Putin proposed Mr Borodin as secretary of the commission for the reunification of Russia and Belarus, a position he still holds.
While Mr Putin's tolerance of those accused of irregularities does not mean that he himself is involved in shady activities, Le Monde has for the first time made serious personal allegations against the Russian President. It has alleged that Mr Putin and Mr Gherman Gref, the Minister for Economic Strategy, were involved with a German real-estate company whose co-founder was arrested earlier this month on charges of money-laundering and links to organised crime. The presidential administration has denied the allegations.
In the area of freedom of expression the armed raid on the Media-Most group, which did not support Mr Putin's presidential campaign, has been the main cause of concern so far. A statement by the Information Minister, Mr Mikhail Lesin, that he was preparing legislation to suspend the activities of "hostile Western media" raised eyebrows further.
The most bizarre media casualty, however, has been the life-size doll made in Mr Putin's likeness and used in Kukly, the Russian version of Spitting Image. The NTV channel, which runs the country's most popular show, said the Putin puppet had been "temporarily withdrawn".