In September 2001, as the U.S. reeled from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vladimir Putin supported Washington's imminent invasion of Afghanistan in ways that would have been inconceivable during the Cold War.
He agreed that U.S. planes carrying humanitarian aid could fly through Russian airspace. He said the U.S. military could use air bases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia. And he ordered his generals to brief their U.S. counterparts on their ill-fated 1980s occupation of Afghanistan.
During Putin's visit to President George W. Bush's Texas ranch two months later, Bush, speaking at a high school, declared Putin "a new style of leader, a reformer, a man who's going to make a huge difference in making the world more peaceful by working closely with the United States."