The Russians know how to make you feel welcome. On my first visit to Moscow as British foreign secretary in 2010, whole motorways seemed to have been closed, vodka flowed freely, and the then President Medvedev hosted me at his villa in the woods. They were determined to improve on their terrible relations with the previous Labour government, and so was I.

Yet within two years we were at furious loggerheads over Syria, and the year after that we were falling out over the direction of Ukraine. Faced with Vladimir Putin's invasion and annexation of Crimea, part of another European country, we British were rightly on the side of sanctions, and penalising aggression. The lashings of vodka might as well have been poured down the drain.

This is the sad cycle of two decades of Western relations with Russia: optimism from each incoming US president or British government, then disillusionment brought on by behaviour that cannot be accepted. From killing untold numbers of civilians in the bombing of Aleppo to murdering dissidents in London with radioactive polonium, Russia takes actions we find beyond the pale.

Now a new US president is about to take office with a fresh determination to do business with the Kremlin, this time unencumbered by the disputes of the past, or indeed any particular knowledge of them. If reports are to be believed, Donald Trump will appoint as his secretary of state an oilman who has done many a deal with Moscow and knows Putin personally. While better relations with Russia are a laudable goal, this could be Russia's best chance since the Second World War to weaken and divide the West.