THE kindly grandmother seemed unlikely to be plotting a violent street demonstration, but police in St Petersburg, where the G8 summit of world leaders takes place next weekend, were taking no chances. They marched into Anna Shashokina’s flat, claimed it was being used as the headquarters of an opposition group and demanded to know her political views.

“I became so agitated and worried I had a mild heart attack,” Shashokina, 67, said. “These things used to happen under communism in the 1970s when people were grilled by police. But isn’t Russia a democracy now? Isn’t it a free country?”

The visit was no mix-up. Shashokina’s son, Andrei, is a little-known opposition figure. In the run-up to the summit, a special police unit has been questioning and intimidating hundreds of opposition activists and their relatives. Critics of the Kremlin have been hauled into police stations to be photographed, fingerprinted and warned against taking part in demonstrations.

It is part of a pattern of repression that has led western politicians to question whether Russia under President Vladimir Putin belongs in the G8 of democratic nations at all. Relations between America and Russia are at their lowest ebb since the collapse of communism.

“The time for glad-handing is over,” said Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. “Putin wants to maintain a smiling facade but the reality is that Russia is close to breaking with the West.”

Putin spent last week mimicking the actions of a western politician. He clumsily volunteered too much information about the last time he had had sex and explained unconvincingly why he had kissed the stomach of a five-year-old boy visiting the Kremlin, saying: “I just wanted to stroke him like a kitten.”

The Russian president also went out of his way to charm human rights activists, such as Irene Khan of Amnesty International, with whom he clucked sympathetically over the Americans’ treatment of terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay.

All the while, the crackdown in St Petersburg was gathering pace. Olga Kunosova, from the Yabloko opposition party, received a threatening anonymous phone call. “I was told if I didn’t stop my work and leave town I would end up being hit over the head with a pipe.”

Andrei Dimitriev, a leading left-wing activist, went into hiding after being ordered by police to tell his followers they should stay away from demonstrations. “They told me to stop all political activity at once and leave the city or they’d take me to the woods and bury me.”

The summit, chaired by Putin, will open on Saturday in the gilded 18th-century palace of Konstantinovsky, the president’s official residence on the outskirts of St Petersburg. Putin has spent £135m restoring the sprawling palace to its former opulence. The summit organisers have ordered 6.5m flowers to be planted along roads leading to the palace, but their fragrance might not be able to sweeten the disagreements.

For Putin, a former KGB agent who grew up in near-poverty only a few miles away, the official G8 agenda bears little relation to the real purpose of the summit. With 70% approval ratings, he is in expansive mood. “The message will be clear. Like it or not, Russia is back,” said a Kremlin aide. “We are on the way to becoming a gas and oil superpower.

“For Putin, the most important thing at the G8 is to get the respect he feels Russia deserves. It is about being up there with the big boys again.”

Russia accounts for just 2.6% of world GDP but has 27% of world gas reserves and 6% of proven oil reserves. The G7 account for 41% of global GDP but have only 4% of gas reserves and 9% of the oil.

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