LONDON – European and US officials divided over US President Donald Trump’sforeign policy found common cause this weekend in decrying what they say isRussia’s covert campaign to undermine Western democracies.

But despite the transatlantic show of anger at Russia during the MunichSecurity Conference, Western officials and diplomats also acknowledged anuncomfortable truth: that Russia is critical to resolving many of theworld’s worst conflicts.

From eastern Ukraine to North Korea, Russia’s status as a nuclear power,its military intervention in Syria and its veto on the United NationsSecurity Council mean any diplomacy must ultimately involve Moscow,officials said.

“We can’t find a political solution without Russia,” Norwegian defenceminister Frank Bakke Jensen told Reuters. “We need to reach a point wherewe can work to find a political solution, and they must be central to that.”

Publicly at least, Russia was the bad guy in Munich, roundly criticised forinterfering in the 2016 US presidential campaign after the US indictment of13 Russians this week, and more broadly for its 2014 annexation ofUkraine’s Crimea.

For the West, such unity of purpose marked a change after a year of Trump’s“America First” rhetoric, his inconsistent statements on NATO and theEuropean Union, his decision to pull out of the Paris climate change accordand his move not to certify Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.

At the annual Munich event, a rare gathering of European and US securityofficials that also attracts top Russian diplomats, American policymakerswere visibly irritated with Moscow’s public denials of accusations ofmeddling.

“I am amazed that … the Russians come, they send someone, every year tobasically refute the facts,” US director of National Intelligence Dan Coatssaid of the Russian presence at the event.

But behind the scenes, diplomats said there was a different tone, as topofficials including NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg met Russianforeign minister Sergei Lavrov in the gold-and-white panelled rooms of theBayerischer Hof hotel.

“There is a diplomatic network that works,” said Russian senator AlekseyPushkov, citing contacts to resolve the Syrian civil war including Moscow,Ankara, Washington and Tel Aviv. “It’s something that, if used efficiently,can prevent bigger confrontations.”

German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel met several times with Lavrov,offering the prospect of easing economic sanctions imposed over Moscow’srole in eastern Ukraine and calling Russia an “indispensable” partner inglobal efforts to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Former US secretary of state John Kerry, who negotiated the 2015 accordcurbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, said the West needed to“compartmentalise” issues with Moscow, so that diplomacy could achieve more.

*In Russia’s Hand*

Part of the challenge for the West is that international crises have beeninterlinked.

Russia is allied to Israel’s nemesis Iran in Syria while Moscow’s supportfor separatists in Ukraine draws NATO’s ire.

But NATO-ally Turkey is seeking to complete an arms deal to buy Russian airdefences. It has struck US-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria withRussia’s blessing.

In Asia, US efforts to stop North Korea’s atomic weapons development restpartly on Moscow’s willingness to countenance a US and European call for anoil embargo on Pyongyang, which it has so far rejected.

“A few years ago you could talk about distinct crises, but today, if you’rediscussing one, you’re shaking all the others,” Norway’s Jensen said.

So as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu railed against Iran inMunich on Sunday, in New York, British, US and French efforts to condemnTehran at the United Nations immediately ran into Russian resistance,diplomats told Reuters.

And in Munich, while US and European officials saw momentum for UNpeacekeepers in eastern Ukraine to resolve the four-year-old conflictthere, US special envoy Kurt Volker conceded everything rested on Moscow.

“It’s in Russia’s hands,” Volker told a gathering of EU and US officials,including Sweden’s defence chief, who offered his country’s troops for anysuch mission.

Nine years ago in Munich, then US vice-president Joe Biden promised to“reset” relations with Russia, but few in the West appeared to realise thedepth of Russia’s resentment over the break-up of the Soviet Union andNATO’s eastward expansion.

Now, with Western economic sanctions in place on Russia over its 2014annexation of Crimea and its support for rebels in eastern Ukraine,East-West ties are at their lowest since the Cold War, with little chanceof an improvement, diplomats said.