Look to Chechnya, where Russian troops have seized the capital they built 100 years ago and destroyed twice in the last decade.

Throughout the assault on the capital and as the new offensive to chase remaining rebels from mountain strongholds in the south begins, the United States and other nations use sharp language to condemn the loss of life and to urge Russia to exercise moderation and compassion.

Russia bends slightly, but does not break its will to subdue its breakaway republic, nor substantively change its tactics in fighting the war, which is domestically popular.

Now focus some 1,200 miles to the southeast, on Muscat, Oman, where the U.S. Navy has impounded a Russian-flagged, privately owned tanker for allegedly violating the Iraqi oil embargo. The United States insists the oil was taken from Iraq’s oil terminals, beyond the scope of U.N.-monitored sales; Russia insists that is not true, and sharply demands the tanker’s return. America ignores those demands.

The common thread in both of these: Vladimir Putin, the acting Russian president, and his search for a new identity for Russia in the post-Yeltsin years. Mr. Putin, in the words of U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, is “a mixed bag,” both intelligent and arrogant. While he is making progress on solving many of Russia’s problems, from political nepotism and corruption to the crippled economy, he is also “in denial” about many of that nation’s problems.

That’s understandable, given the depth of the challenges before the former Soviet Union; so many troubles exist, no one man can be expected even to understand them all, nonetheless be expected to solve even a majority of those problems.

What is apparent, however, is that Russia must move on, past the era of Boris Yeltsin, to the next step of its evolution to capitalism and democracy — two traditions with which Russia has never had real-world experience at any point in its history.

Mr. Putin has to find a new voice for Russia; one that both asserts its goals of remaining unified and focused on democratic reforms, but that also allow the nation to retain its dignity and prominence on the world stage. It will take a lot of talking, not all of it amicable.

That is why Russia plays the dual roles of ignoring the world’s demands on Chechnya while offering unheeded demands to release the Volga-Neft-147. And the fact that neither the United States nor Russia has made explicit threats behind those demands proves that both sides recognize that Russia is merely talking through the concepts behind what she will become in the new millennium.

“He [Mr. Putin] is willing to talk,” Secretary Albright told the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Tuesday. “He is somebody you can have a conversation with.”

Fortunately, words are all that are being exchanged now. While we need to heed the messages both sides are sending, both sides are also wise to leave threats out of the dialog.