When Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin prime minister on 9 August 1999, few Russians knew much about him. In early television appearances he came across as mousy, shy and awkward, a man unaccustomed to the limelight from which his previous career in the KGB had shielded him.

But within weeks he revealed a character trait that would become the defining feature of his rule – ruthlessness. His first memorable phrase was his threat to wipe out terrorists “even if they’re in the shithouse”, and within weeks he had launched a terrifying war against separatists in Chechnya that would leave tens of thousands of civilians dead.

Twenty years on, as Russia and the west teeter towards confrontation, it is hard to remember that Putin started out as an avowedly pro-western leader. George W Bush and Tony Blair rushed to glad-hand him, and Putin himself stood in the Bundestag proclaiming at length and in fluent German that Russia’s destiny was in Europe. But western leaders were appalled by his brutality in Chechnya, and by the first signs of his antidemocratic tendencies, which included his muzzling of critical television stations.

If the west can invade Iraq with impunity – so Putin reasons – then Russia can help out its mate in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad

Putin’s fatal flaw, it seemed to me, was his utter inability to see that there was a contradiction between being a ruthless autocrat at home, and the values of the western civilisation to which he (at least at that time) paid lip service.

Some argue that he was never seriously pro-western, that the overtures masked ulterior motives and KGB-inspired schemes to dominate the world. But I think that is mistaken. When I worked as a consultant to the Kremlin in the earlier part of Putin’s rule, I had many meetings with senior officials and have no doubt that they regarded themselves as “western” and even as democrats.

The problem lay elsewhere – in Putin’s inability to understand the west’s wariness and increasing hostility as his internal policies revealed him to be no democrat. I discussed this with his advisers: how can you hope to persuade the west you are a good partner if you refuse to properly denounce the Soviet era, if you crack down on protests and stifle the media? They could not connect the two. And so the west naturally grew more and more suspicious, and Putin in response grew first disappointed, then angry and ultimately downright hostile. Since that first pro-western phase, I think it is possible to distinguish three further stages of “Putinism”.

The second began in about 2003 and peaked in February 2007, when Putin travelled to Munich to deliver a blistering attack on the United States’ pretensions to rule the world as “sole master”. He was annoyed that instead of reciprocating his gestures (including his help in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan), the Americans had not only ignored his robust opposition to the war in Iraq, but were pressing ahead with plans for a missile shield that, in Putin’s view, together with Nato’s expansion, directly threatened Russia’s security.

Play Video 0:53 An excerpt from Russia's new TV show on the weekly activities of Vladimir Putin - video

Phase three developed during the Barack Obama presidency, for four years of which Putin was nominally prime minister while remaining the key player in the Kremlin. He became furious with what he saw as the US’s “superiority” complex (one might also read that as a Russian inferiority complex), epitomised by Obama’s remarks that Russia was a mere “regional power”, and that Putin had “that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom”. Russian leaders (not just Putin) do not go in for personal insults like that. And they have a strong aversion to being lectured about how to behave.

Putin’s fury reached its peak at the time of the parliamentary elections in 2011, which were patently falsified and brought thousands into the streets in protest. He blamed the Americans for supporting the demonstrators – not just morally but materially too – and as soon as he was re-elected president in 2012 he began to declare the supremacy of Russian society and morality over the “decadent” and “genderless” west. This led to a foreign policy based on the notion that if the west will not accept us as equal partners, then we will simply assume that role for ourselves. One can see this philosophy in action again and again.

If the west can invade Iraq with impunity – so Putin reasons – then Russia can help out its mate in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad. If the west thinks it can just drag Ukraine, with its centuries-long ties to Russia and strategic importance, out of Moscow’s orbit, then it can think again. If the west thinks it has the right to influence Russian affairs with its NGOs and funding, its constant propaganda and blatant support for the opposition, then how can it complain when we deploy a few internet bots to muck up your election processes? We are only doing what you have been doing to us for decades.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘‘The irony is that, in burnishing his image as a strongman, he betrays his vulnerability.’ Vladimir Putin carrying a hunting rifle in the Russian republic of Tuva. Photograph: Dmitry Astakhov/AFP/Getty Images

This, I believe, is Putin’s current modus operandi. He regards what he does as a mirror image of what the west does to Russia and around the world. The irony is that, in burnishing his image as a strongman, he betrays his vulnerability. His paranoia about permitting free elections and his thuggish recent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters are evidence of his weakness. The more he entrenches, the clearer it becomes that he is terrified of losing control – and of the retribution that may follow. He has now created a police state that brooks no dissent, buttressed by a media that glorifies his every word in true Soviet style.

Vladimir Putin: 20 years in power - in pictures Read more

There is little prospect of an improvement in relations so long as Putin remains in power. But in the longer term there is hope. The Russian two-headed eagle has always looked both west and into its own soul. The current situation is essentially one of those perennial lurches towards Russian exceptionalism or Slavophilism, and the pendulum will surely swing back. Most Russians – certainly in the intelligentsia and middle classes – remain western-oriented.

Putin is still popular at home precisely because he has instinctively surfed the nation’s changing moods – reflecting both their desire to be part of the world from which they were shut off for decades, and their craving for respect and security. When he eventually leaves the scene, the west might bear that in mind. For even if he lacks Putin’s ruthlessness, his successor’s priorities will be pretty much the same.

• Angus Roxburgh is the author of Moscow Calling: Memoirs of a Foreign Correspondent