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© Alexei Nikolsky/AFP/Getty ImagesRussia's president Vladimir Putin said the pair's relationship broke down after Nato's intervention in Libya in 2011.
Vladimir Putin may have wanted his televised interview with citizens on Thursday to portray a conciliatory side. But the Russian president's current antipathy towards the US was never far beneath the surface during his phone-in with the nation.

"To a certain extent, trust has been lost. But we do not think we are to blame," Putin said, conceding that relations had plummeted to their worst level since the cold war. "The United States can act in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, but Russia is not allowed to defend its interests."

Catching himself, Putin added: "I want to emphasize once again: Russia is interested in growing relations with the United States, and will do everything to ensure that this confidence is restored."

He made similar overtones towards Europe: "We do not intend to spoil the relations between Russia and Europe, and we hope that this is not part of our European partners' plans."

Putin even offered an uncharacteristically charitable assessment of Barack Obama, when asked by a six-year old girl if the US president would come to his rescue if he were drowning. "He's a decent and brave man," Putin said. "He would do it."

Yet Putin's animosity toward Obama, and the western powers he represents, was clear.

In Putin's view, the deterioration in relations between the two countries did not begin with the crisis over Ukraine, but could be traced back to 2011, following Nato's intervention in Libya, which culminated in Muammar Gaddafi being ousted from power and later killed.

Russia did not use its veto against a UN security council resolution enabling a "no-fly zone", a move Putin subsequently regretted, saying the resolution provided western powers with a cover to launch a "medieval crusade".

On Thursday, Putin pointed to that moment as the source of the breakdown of the much-vaunted "reset" in relations between Washington and Moscow. "You know, it's not that [the reset] has ended now over Crimea. I think it ended even earlier, right after the events in Libya," he said.

The so-called "reset" came in 2009, when then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton presented her counterpart Sergei Lavrov with a button to symbolise a clean slate. It seemed doomed before it had begun; in an embarrassing mistranslation, the button contained the Russian word for "overload" rather than "reset" - a gaffe Putin brought up during his phone-in.

Evidence of the failure of the reset was clear in the appearance of whistleblower Edward Snowden on the show, asking a pre-recorded question via video message. It would almost certainly have been sanctioned by the Russian president beforehand.

The public relations manoeuvre had echoes of Putin's op-ed article in the New York Times in September last year, after Obama had abandoned planned military strikes against Syria. Ostensibly urging the US to resist force in Syria, the article was widely seen as an attempt to mock Obama, using many of the arguments that would appeal to his own liberal base, and taking issue with America's self-perceived "exceptionalism".

Obama, of course, has been prone to riling Putin in not-so-subtle ways. In recent days, the White House has repeatedly played down Russia's power, saying its influence has waned since the days of the Soviet Union, and it can no longer be called a "superpower". On Wednesday, Obama said in an interview with CBS that Moscow would not want a military confrontation with the US because it realised Washington commands "significantly superior" military capabilities.

At times, Obama's slights against Putin have been as personal as anything in the other direction. "I don't have a bad personal relationship with Putin," Obama said at a press conference last August, before quipping: "I know the press likes to focus on body language and he's got that kind of slouch, like the bored kid at the back of the classroom."