I just found another article which sheds more light.
I think until know we had all these dots, but couldn't see the picture, but now that we got these few latest pieces of information, all of a sudden the jigsaw puzzle fits.
Here is more on the motivation why Russia wanted to keep us out of Iraq.
Fall of Baghdad bad news for Russian economy: experts
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030410154818.0npby67g.html The fall of Baghdad is bad news for the Russian economy which is likely to lose out on oil investments in Saddam Hussein's Iraq and see the price of crude fall, delivering a blow to oil-dependant growth, experts said Thursday.
Russia's oil giants which maintained long-standing ties with Iraq fear they may be marginalised after a US-led war in which their country took no part, with waning prospects of obtaining crumbs from the table of what is already being seen as a postwar carve-up.
Russian oil companies have invested more than one billion dollars (euros) over the past seven years in Iraq's vast oil reserves -- second only to those of Saudi Arabia -- but they risk exclusion from post-war contracts because of Russia's fierce opposition to the US-British war.
With oil accounting for a substantial proportion of export sales, Russia's budget and its economic growth are closely linked to oil prices, and the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday revised substantially downwards, from 4.0 to 4.0 percent, its estimate for Russia's economic growth for 2003.
The sudden shortfall in revenues could cause the economy to falter momentarily, although in the long term it was always bound to face competition from Iraqi oil.