There's no question that Putin is serious about fighting terrorism, Islamic terrorism, and probably Islam itself. Russia is not nearly as geopolitically isolated from Islamikazi infiltration as are we.
However, that said, his failure to ally with the U.S., particularly considering his personal friendship with GWB, is "Interesting". He does have to consider Russia's interests first, but I for one find it very difficult to imagine that anyone in Russia gives a flying Feinstein about what the French or the Germans think. The Russians certainly take America a lot more seriously than they do Europe, in every sense except possibly economically from the standpoint of foreign trade (and I'm not even sure about that).
I suspect that Putin's fancy footwork is the result of internal pressure from his military and other influences in Russia who don't want to see him aligned with the U.S., are really uneasy about U.S. influence in the Middle East, etc. His military was up to their neck in "deals" with Saddam Hussein, and they DO NOT want the U.S. occupying the Middle East. (Frankly, I'm not even so sure I care if Russia occupies the Middle East - if the Islamikazis got a dose of what Russia will do to them in the aftermath of Afghanistan and Chechnya, they'll be be looking back nostalgically on merely having Americans in their back yard...).
That said... I want to see Putin instruct his security people to communicate every shred of evidence from the two plane bombings to the FBI. The Islamikazis smuggled some RDX onto those planes, and they will try it here if they can. If they've figured out some way to get an Islamikazi with an explosive belt onto a plane, we need to know immediately how they did it and institute countermeasures here *immediately*. (My guess is that FBI is already on the scene in Russia...)
Please check out Ramsey Yousef's device at google if you have not seen it before. It was quite a nasty little thing and he even tested one on Singapore Airlines(could be dif. airline). His was a leave behind device that he could set and then get himself off the plane at a planned stopover. One person can not pull that off anymore probably, but multiples might be able to get it together.
The same is saidable about Bush in reference to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Bush even use UN, Germany and fRance to pressure Putin from bombing Taliban in spring of 2001...gooood idea that was.