As he promised, US President Barack Obama has been to Russia and pressed the “reset” button. He left the country yesterday for the G8 summit in Italy — and he left with a string of signed agreements, ranging from further bilateral nuclear arms reduction to a deal allowing US troops and munitions to pass through Russian airspace en route to Afghanistan.

There is, however, something significant about what was not agreed on the Obama trip. Publicly at least Obama did not budge on the US-European missile shield which Moscow views with some justice as being directed against it rather than some putative threat of missile attack from a nuclear armed Iran or North Korea. Nor was the US president prepared to concede Georgia and Ukraine as being exclusively within the Russian sphere of influence. He also had pointed comments to make about the importance of pluralist democracy in a Russia that has become increasingly authoritarian under president and now Premier Putin.

Any one of these issues could have been used by the Kremlin to sabotage the summit. Instead, the Russians rolled out the formula that both sides agreed to differ on some issues and refused to allow these differences to cloud the sunny protestations of mutual goodwill. What was said in private is of course another matter. The key talks will have been the breakfast meeting with Vladimir Putin who remains Russia’s highly popular strongman and top man in all but name.

Both Putin and Obama have built reputations for straight talking, though the US president always appears to choose his words with care. It is likely that, albeit within the bounds of politeness, neither man held back from expressing his concerns with some force. That each now probably understands the other better is all to the good. It is also interesting that after the meeting, there were none of the Bush-Blair era platitudes about “looking into the whites of a man’s eyes and knowing that this was someone with whom you could do business.”

Indeed the summit was marked by being so business-like. This was a reflection of the immense amount of background work that has been taking place between Moscow and Washington virtually from the day that Obama moved into the Oval Office.

Perhaps the most important effect Obama and his entourage had upon their hosts was the extent to which the Americans treated them as equals. Obama at no time talked down to the Russians. The fundamental flaws of the country’s lopsided oil-dependent economy may have been exposed by the global financial meltdown, its soldiers embarrassed by tactical failures during the Georgian conflict and its nuclear arms in a state of serious decay, but Obama left these unmentioned.

Instead, both sides talked of partnership and abandoning residual Cold War attitudes. The meeting looks to have laid solid foundations for US-Russian relations over the next four Obama years. Though unspecified in post-summit communiqués, the world hopes that the meeting will also have a profound impact on the way Moscow and Washington now work together as members of the Middle East Quartet.