The Russian leader’s visit — brought forward from October to help to boost the Chancellor in elections on September 18 — is the latest in a string of international interventions.

Rarely have world leaders been so open in their sympathies: this election is pitting Old Europe against New Europe, the free-market Atlanticism of Angela Merkel, the conservative contender, against the Chancellor’s anti-US posturing.

“Putin is supporting his friend Gerhard even if he understands that his pal will most likely not be either Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor,” Vladimir Belov, director of German studies at the influential Europe Institute in Moscow, said.

Mr Putin was more circumspect during his visit but said: “I listen to criticism from the Chancellor because I realise he is a well-wishing friend.” As a token of his support, Mr Putin attended a signing ceremony for a $5 billion (£2.7 billion) pipeline that will supply Germany with Russian natural gas.

President Chirac of France, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, and José Socrates, the Socialist Prime Minister of Portugal, are all in the Schröder camp.

But President Bush and Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, of Austria, can barely conceal their impatience for change. The Poles and Lithuanians also back Frau Merkel.

Tony Blair is politely neutral in public about Herr Schröder but critical in private. In the latest Vorwärts, the Social Democratic party magazine, he gives a lukewarm appreciation. “Gerhard has proven his courage by starting important reforms,” he says — in comments using the past tense. A meeting between Mr Blair and Frau Merkel this summer raised British hopes that she would press harder for agricultural reform in Europe.

Mr Putin managed a short meeting with Frau Merkel yesterday but his expression was that of a man visiting the dentist. He has made a performance out of his friendship with Herr Schröder. He flew a Cossack choir to sing at his 60th birthday party and gives elaborate compliments to his wife.

Mr Putin helped to speed the Chancellor’s adoption of a Russian orphan. Yet he found no time this summer to meet Wolfgang Schäuble, Frau Merkel’s foreign policy adviser, in Moscow. There are rumours that Herr Schröder will be offered a consultancy in the Russian-German energy business if he loses.

President Chirac would have been a more enthusiastic cheerleader for Herr Schröder had he not been confined to bed by illness. They had a 45-minute telephone conversation this week and the Schröder team let it be known that M Chirac is fully behind the Chancellor.

Mr Erdogan, who once called the Chancellor “a man without a backbone”, now sees him as crucial to Turkey’s future. Frau Merkel appears ready to do everything to keep Turkey at arm’s length from the European Union while Herr Schröder is more encouraging. The 500,000 Turkish Germans eligible to vote traditionally support the Social Democrats.

Perhaps the most outspoken of Frau Merkel’s supporters is Chancellor Schüssel. “I’m crossing my fingers for Angela Merkel,” he said this week. The centre-right leader is clearly in sympathy with her economic policies. “Germany is tied down with hundreds of thousands of threads like Gulliver, bureaucratic rules, anxieties and disappointments. Angela Merkel will get rid of many of these.”

The clinching factor for Herr Schüssel is that Frau Merkel has promised to loosen the Franco-German axis and woo smaller EU countries. Yet Chancellor Schröder made exactly the same pledge before his first general election win in 1998.

Nothing is quite as it seems in German politics. President Bush felt betrayed in the 2002 election campaign, because Herr Schröder did not discipline a politician who compared Mr Bush to Hitler. Now the insults come from the other side: a Christian Democratic regional minister said yesterday that Mr Bush “should be shot” over the hurricane disaster. The US Embassy was simmering but stayed silent.

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