A resurgent Kremlin is setting the agenda on major world issues and has once again started to boss its back yard. Buoyed by his Syria diplomatic triumph, Vladimir Putin has regained some of the swagger that temporarily deserted him during protests against his re-election last year.

Greenpeace activists have been put behind bars, a Dutch diplomat beaten up, and former Soviet republics hounded, with the Kremlin banning Lithuanian cheese imports for its hosting of an EU summit with eastern European states and bullying Ukraine for daring to attend.

So what is the reaction to Putin's newfound foreign policy confidence in Europe's major capitals, and are they responding with one voice?

France: Yves-Michel Riols and Piotr Smolar, Le Monde

Ever since he arrived in the Élysée Palace last year, François Hollande has been trying to solve a conundrum: how to adopt the right stance towards Moscow. Implacable on major issues such as Syria and Iran, Russia has also conducted an aggressive policy in the parts of its backyard (Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia) that are tempted by European integration. Domestically, the "vertical power" introduced by Vladimir Putin remains largely a monopoly. Rejecting any interference in its affairs, the regime has developed an anti-western rhetoric, whether towards US imperialist designs or European tolerance of gay marriage.

"Russia systematically forces a showdown on all subjects," said a French foreign ministry official – an approach illustrated by the Syrian crisis. For months, Russia proved inflexible, supporting Damascus unconditionally. Then suddenly it turned around and concluded, to general surprise, a deal with the US on the dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons.

War-damaged buildings in Homs, Syria Photograph: Yazan Homsy/REUTERS

The episode was galling for France, which had adopted an aggressive stance towards Syria. Now, at the Quai d'Orsay, the only consolation is the foreign ministry's view that "the Russians did not move spontaneously. They responded to threats of [military] strikes supported by France."

But in fact, France's influence in Russia is limited. Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, came back from a trip to Moscow in September empty-handed. "The Syrian crisis has unveiled strong tensions between France and Russia, even if they were not publicly displayed," noted Thomas Gomart, Russia specialist at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).

He added: "Since the western intervention in Libya in 2011, the Russians are very critical of the close ties between Qatar and the French political class. Moscow considers Qatar and Saudi Arabia as destabilising regimes that encourage Sunni extremism in Syria and also in the Russian Caucasus."

Before Syria, Franco-Russian relations were generally improving. After years flailing behind Germany and Italy, France decided to copy them by emphasising the bilateral relationship. France's new ambassador to Moscow, Jean-Maurice Ripert, who studied with Hollande at the elite National College of Administration (ENA), will have a clear roadmap: continued rapprochement. Ever since the financial crisis took hold, European powers have been forced to court emerging markets more. Moscow meanwhile wants to diversify its own economy. There are mutual interests here.

Once upon a time, France lagged behind in direct investment, with only its biggest companies such as Alstom and Total in Russia. Now 400 have operations there and 6,000 do business with Russia. Investment shot up to nearly €12bn in 2012. Military co-operation is intensifying. The first French-built Mistral-class helicopter carrier, the Vladivostok, will be delivered to Russia next year.

The casualty of this increased co-operation is the focus on human rights. France has remained silent on the issue during the new Putin presidency. Hollande summed up the attitude towards Putin's repressive array of new laws during his first official visit to Moscow in February: "I do not have to judge, I do not have to evaluate."

UK: Simon Tisdall, foreign affairs columnist, the Guardian

It has long been plain that Vladimir Putin, Russia's nationalist strongman, is no gentleman. Russia's increased assertiveness internationally is attributed in part to his crude, combative, take-no-prisoners attitude.

But appearances can be deceptive. According to British diplomats and experts on Russia, the power and influence of both Putin and Russia, measured in political, economic and demographic terms, are steadily eroding while the EU's leverage is growing. The more noise Moscow makes, the more it seems to be striving to disguise the evidence of decline.

"The premise that Russia has become more assertive is correct," said Sir Andrew Wood, Britain's ambassador in Moscow from 1995 to 2000. "Is this due to weakness or strength? Weakness, probably. There are growing problems with the economy, large internal problems and tensions. The ruling group is trying to reassert control."

Like other British observers, Wood noted that particular Russian angst, bordering on paranoia, surrounded the expansion of the EU's Eastern Partnership. This programme seeks to strengthen ties with former Soviet republics that Russia once deemed its property.

The issue will come to a head next month at a summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. It is widely expected to produce an EU association agreement, including a free trade deal, with Ukraine, and possibly with Moldova and Georgia.

"Losing Ukraine would be a massive blow to Russia. It's the most important post-Soviet state," said James Nixey, head of the Russia and Eurasia programme at the Chatham House thinktank in London. "Ukraine is viewed by Putin as part of Russia. He'll ask himself, how can you be a great power if this huge appendage is lopped off? Overall, Russia is losing the battle for control of the sandwich states between Russia and the EU."

Russia's discomfiture stems in part from the blow such defections would deliver to its own pet Customs Union project, part of Putin's grandiose plan for a Eurasian union. In a sign of distress, he imposed a partial trade embargo on Lithuania. Moscow has also reportedly offered Kiev an $8bn gas price cut if it joined the Customs Union.

Alexander Litvinenko, former KGB spy who died in London in 2006. Photograph: Alistair Fuller/AP

"The EU has been very feeble in the past in dealing with Russia," said Sir Anthony Brenton, Britain's ambassador to Moscow from 2004 to 2008. "We received zero support from our EU partners over the [Alexander] Litvinenko affair [the former KGB spy who was poisoned in London in 2006]."

That was changing, he said. "If Ukraine wants the association agreement, and if they release Yulia Tymoshenko [the jailed opposition leader], then the EU should go ahead and also launch proceedings against Russia through the WTO [World Trade Organisation] over Lithuania."

Brenton and other British diplomats expressed satisfaction that Germany was taking a tougher stance towards Russia after years of placing its energy supply requirements ahead of other considerations. Growing human rights concerns, and high-profile trials involving the punk group Pussy Riot and now Greenpeace, had changed attitudes. They also noted that France under François Hollande has a less cosy relationship with Moscow than in Nicolas Sarkozy's time."The United Kingdom has always pursued a relatively tough, robust policy," said Wood. "I think we're now seeing a new realism about Russia on all sides in the EU, free of delusions about a special Washington-Moscow relationship. The EU is now the third leg."

David Clark, chair of the independent Russia Foundation, said Britain's relations with Russia had undergone a "mini-reset" under the Conservative government, involving tacit agreement to draw a line under the Litvinenko affair, greater emphasis on business and commercial ties, and co-operation on matters of shared interest. One result was last week's $5.3bn BP-Rosneft oil deal. Despite this, relations remained "in a bit of a rut", he said.

Charles Grant, director of the London-based Centre for European Reform (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".

Wood said the large number of Russians living in "Londongrad", including the so-called oligarchs and wealthy middle class who have bought football clubs, driven up property prices and competed for elite school places in fashionable areas such as Knightsbridge, was an indication of the underlying strength of the bilateral relationship.

Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise after being seized by Russian authorities during a protest against drilling in the Arctic. Photograph: Igor Podgorny/AFP/Getty Images

But he said last month's arrest of Greenpeace activists in the Arctic was an example of how the Russians could shoot themselves in the foot. "Obviously this was done as a demonstration of some kind. Putin has distanced himself from it, but it is convenient for him. It's not aimed at the EU specifically, but is aimed at asserting Russia's primary role in the Arctic.

"Russians are very contradictory people. They hire people to improve their image, then they do things like Greenpeace and Pussy Riot. Maybe it makes them feel strong and powerful. But it doesn't do them any good in the outside world."

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.

Clark said Putin continued to be motivated by fear of encirclement and the imposition on Russia of western political and civil rights agendas. His diplomatic success over Syria notwithstanding, his posture was essentially defensive.

"Russia's economic position is very fragile due its dependency on global oil prices; it is very exposed, very vulnerable. There has been no progress in modernising and diversifying, despite what Putin says," Clark said.

Despite a contracting economy and falling popularity ratings, Putin remained a formidable opponent, Brenton said. "Putin is very professional. He is very well briefed. He tends to go for the jugular if he sees an opportunity. He is not a diplomat. He's not the sort of guy you would invite to a tea party. But we have to do business with him."

Germany: Daniel Brössler, Süddeutsche Zeitung

Modern Germany longs for harmony – and there is no area in which this longing is this reliably satisfied better than in foreign policy. Broadly, most parties, with exception of the leftwing Die Linke, are in agreement over Germany's position in the world. No one is seriously questioning Angela Merkel's strategic combination of carefully dosed shows of strength and greatest possible avoidance of risk. Things are likely to stay that way, irrespective of the outcome of the current coalition negotiations. There's only one aspect of foreign policy where the German consensus is shattered: Russia.

Germany has tradition in this respect. The comradeship between former chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin during the latter's first stint as president wasn't welcomed by everyone. With Putin's return to the Kremlin, the old controversy has flared up again. Ever since, there has been a bitter battle over how to behave in relation to a Russian president who represses critics at home and attacks critics from abroad. Russia even became an issue during an election campaign which ignored the world outside Germany in every other respect: SPD chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrück accused Merkel of doing too little to get Putin to co-operate on Syria.

Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel at the G20 summit in St Petersburg in September. Photograph: Kay Nietfeld/ Kay Nietfeld/dpa/Corbis

That accusation was unfair but telling. Unfair because Merkel had tried to talk to Putin early on during the Syrian conflict and earned only ridicule from the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. Telling because it shows the different stances on Russia within German politics. On all sides, there has been a change in attitudes in view of Putin's calculated turn away from the west and the aggressiveness with which he tries to keep Ukraine and other former Soviet countries from the EU. But the conclusions from this shock have been different.

"Put an end to this Russia bashing," the SPD's former foreign policy expert Gernot Erler recently demanded. He called for more understanding of the "frustration" that had built up in Russia towards the west since the 90s. In Russian eyes, at least, Nato and the EU had made merciless use of Russia's weakness. This school of thought dominates in SPD circles. It sees itself in the tradition of Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, calls for critics to get to grips with Russia on its own terms and warns of countering Putin's cold shoulder with a blast of frosty air.

Merkel, on the other hand, has opted for polite determination in dealing with Putin, whom she has known since the start of her rule. At a discussion at the Kremlin last year, she told him that criticism shouldn't always be dismissed as "destructive". And when Putin recently cancelled her speech at an exhibition about looted art in St Petersburg, she immediately threatened to cut her visit short – which produced the desired effect: her speech was rescheduled. That episode shows how Merkel likes to deal with Putin. She considers it pointless, counterproductive even, to answer the Russian's provocations with passive reserve. She and her foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen are certainly less worried about standing up to Putin than the SPD and their foreign policy experts.

If the next German government consists of a grand coalition between Merkel's party and the SPD, it is almost certain that policy towards Russia is going to be the source of conflict. This will particularly be the case if the Social Democrats claim the foreign ministry. As foreign minister in the last grand coalition, the SPD's Frank-Walter Steinmeier had pursued the same kind of strategy that he had followed when he was Gerhard Schröder's chief of staff in the chancellery. He was cautious when it came to criticising Russia's human rights abuses in public. The "modernising partnership" – a term coined when Steinmeier was foreign minister – lives on in language only, and has suffered from the fact that Putin's Russia only wants to equate modernisation with technological progress.

Regardless of which party provides the new foreign minister, the foreign ministry has a reputation as a bastion of "Russia empathisers", civil servants who warn of trying Russia's patience with too many patronising lectures. A ruling coalition between the Christian Democrats and the Green party could be a more attractive option in that light. No one has been more outspoken in calling for a strong defence of human rights when dealing with Russia than the Greens. Of course, any Green foreign minister could end up suffering the same fate as his or her predecessor, Joschka Fischer. Moscow simply ignored him; instead, they went straight to Schröder and his people. And Fischer soon learnt to avoid the Russian capital altogether.

Poland: Pawel Swieboda, director of Warsaw thinktank Demos Europa and guest columnist, Gazeta Wyborcza

From a political point of view, Russia is no longer a factor for Poland. While sensitive issues surface from time to time, especially around the Smolensk tragedy, Russia is no longer a political reference point for Poles. But its culture remains very popular and Russia's tormented soul continues to intrigue.

Russia made a strategic mistake by resisting the Atlanticist aspirations of central Europe. If at the time it had treated the changes in these countries openly and dispassionately, it could now boast genuine respect. Instead, new EU members from eastern Europe were so riled that they were dubbed the "new warriors of the cold war". Poland even blocked the candidacy of Paavo Lipponen as European commission president because he had advised Russian companies.

Since then, a thaw of sorts. Firstly some small cross-border trade opened up with Russia's Kaliningrad exclave, which borders Poland. Trade with Russia itself has also increased – but on political issues Poland does not flinch. We do not want to reveal what we think of the state of Russian "democracy". We are shocked by Russia's Syria policy, but are quietly satisfied that Russia is so busy with Middle Eastern affairs that it pays less attention to eastern Europe.

Welders work on the Polish section of a gas pipeline linking Russia with western Europe. Photograph: Czarek Sokolowski/AP

On the delicate matter of its energy dependence on Russia, Poland has finally started doing its homework. The construction of the LNG terminal in Swinoujscie has been delayed but it will be finished next year. No one in Poland would deny that the dash for shale gas is directly linked to bargaining positions vis-a-vis Gazprom, the Russian natural gas giant. On the other hand, the Polish leadership shudders when it observes Russian defence policy. Poland does not understand Nato's insouciance towards Russia's military potential. Russia's army has serious shortcomings, but Russia remains a nuclear power – and an unpredictable one at that. The 2008 Georgia war may have been forgotten in the west. Not in Poland.

Then there is Ukraine – a large space in which Poland and Russia have had a long strategic battle. Polish leaders sat up and took notice when the Kremlin began to pressure Kiev to renounce its ambitions to join the EU. It has long been clear that Putin's personal project is the "Eurasian alliance" – a cynical attempt to restore Russia's sphere of influence with the former Soviet Union.

The Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, has tried so far to play it both ways at the same time, but now seems determined to sign the EU agreement. For Poland, Ukraine is a priority. Until the ink is dry on the EU pact, Warsaw will continue to work for its inclusion in Europe.

What does this mean for the future? The European Union is resigned to Russia. In recent years, almost everything has been tried – trade talks, the so-called "common spaces". The entry of Russia into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) raised great hopes, which until now have not resulted in much. It was hoped that Russia would follow the lead of China, which used its entry into the global economic system to reform and open up. The EU has accepted that Russia will not be like it any time soon. For now, it is playing a waiting game, hoping that the changes in the world order will instil a new mood in the Kremlin. Poland is waiting too.

Spain: Carmen Claudin, El País

Spain seems to think that Putin's Russia is not a problem for it. Recent events that have again put Russia under the international spotlight – its role in Syria or the pressure it placed on Ukraine not to sign the new Association Agreement with the EU next November – have not earned any special attention in Madrid.

Spain's prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, between the Spanish and European flags. Photograph: Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images

Even so, and despite the signing in March 2009 of the Strategic Partnership between the two countries, there is no indication that Russia really takes Spain seriously, as a country that carries any weight within the EU. The new Concept of Russian Foreign Policy, from February 2013, where each word was carefully measured, devotes a separate paragraph to the importance of developing bilateral relations with European countries such as Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands, while Spain is relegated to the category of "other". The military co-operation agreement signed between the two countries in July 2013 looks likely to be the most serious event in their bilateral relations.

Spain rarely decouples itself from Brussels in its Russia policy. And when it does so – as with negotiations for the elimination of visas for Russian citizens in the Schengen area, or on its refusal to recognise Kosovo – it tends to lean towards Russia. Perhaps Spain will one day understand that with Russia it is not enough to simply take a friendly and uncritical approach in order for it truly consider Spain as a strategic partner. Reaching agreements is certainly important but it is not the same as making policy.

Italy: Roberto Toscano, La Stampa

In recent weeks, Russia has been showing strong signs of the assertiveness that has characterised the politics and the style of Vladimir Putin for some time. There is no doubt that the Russia's triumphant activism was facilitated by Barack Obama's uncertainty over Syria, after he was pushed towards a fight he did not believe in.

With his diplomatic initiative on chemical weapons, Putin offered Obama a way out. But it would be a mistake to see this political victory as a one off, as the result of some talented diplomacy by a Russian leader who knew how to seize the moment.

Instead, it is worth looking at recent events as the fruit of coherent political strategy by Russia and Putin, the aims of which are clear.

It all starts with the humiliation that Russians feel, even anti-communist Russians, over the loss of Russia's former global influence and over the fragmentation of a state that most Russians would have preferred to see remain intact, even after the end of the Soviet Union. This was precisely the view Putin expressed in 2005, when he defined the end of the USSR as the "biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century".

How can Russia get over this humiliation and win back the global influence that it has never ceased to consider its right? And to what degree is this ambition compatible with our interests, as European and Italians?

Putin is ambitious but not a megalomaniac. He knows only too well that the bipolar world will not return and that America cannot be challenged or even counterbalanced.

With great realism, Putin has realised that the only way Russia can back its interests and boost its image as a great power is through diplomacy.

That is not to say Russia has stopped creating problems for the US or opposing US interests by helping America's enemies, by putting pressure on countries in the sphere of influence Russia tries to maintain (from central Asia to the Caucauses to Ukraine), even if they are formally independent, by strongly opposing US plans to set up anti-missile systems near its borders.

But all these gambits are part of a bigger and more important diplomatic game, a game that Russia intends to play on a multilateral level. Proof is the text Concept of Russian Foreign Policy approved in February, in which the aims of Russian foreign policy are laid out.The UN is mentioned numerous times, as are the embryonic but dynamic multilateral initiatives that Russia is launching in Asia.

Moscow is assuming there will never again be a bipolar world, while it loves to remind the US – as Putin did in his provocative editorial in the New York Times on September 11 – that its dream of a unipolar world has failed.

That leaves a multipolar world in which some countries are more equal than others when it comes to organising the structure and the rules of the international system. At the start of the previously cited strategic document, there is a reference to the "augmented responsibility of Russia in defining the international agenda and the construction of the international relations".

But isn't a multipolar world one in which the EU can seek a global role?

Russia's challenge can be seen from a critical point of view by the US and Europe (not all their interests will coincide), but they should not be blindly hostile.

Russia has always been seen by Italy as an extremely interesting commercial and economic partner, but it is not just about economics. If Russia switches from its proverbial "nyet" at the UN to a more flexible game in a bid to build influence through the UN – and not against the UN – that will favour a country such as Italy, which has a multilateral foreign policy.

Russia, as shown in its strategy document, has no intention of abandoning its privileged status on the security council, but it insists on the need for a security council that is more representative, or larger. Just as Italy does.

In Rome, there is a cautious but substantial optimism about Russia.