WASHINGTON, April 7 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a man to wear his heart on his sleeve. He is matter of fact and businesslike, adept at concealing his emotions and sticking to the point. So the occasional touches of a rare warmth on display in his farewell news conference Sunday with his American counterpart, the man he calls "George," were noteworthy.

It is not as though this meeting was farewell. They will meet again at this year's Group of Eight summit in Japan, and though Bush departs public life next January, Putin will remain a major player as designated next prime minister.

But Putin could and perhaps should have been far more effusive and even grateful to his guest. Were there any justice in international affairs, the main squares of Russia would by now boast large and flattering statue of President Bush, in recognition of his central role in restoring Russia's status as a great power.

The key to this has been Bush's role in boosting the oil price to over $100 a barrel, both through his ill-starred invasion of Iraq and then through the warlike rhetoric against Iran. The oil price was around $20 a barrel at the end of 2001, and it began to climb to $30 as the Bush administration's rhetoric against Saddam Hussein became fiercer in 2002.

It jumped to $40 a barrel with the war and has risen pretty steadily since, as the wrecking of Iraq's infrastructure and the sabotage of Iraq's pipelines made a mockery of the neoconservative claims the Iraq war would be self-financing. There is no question other factors played an important role, like the growth in demand in China and India, but Bush's war kicked off the process of quadrupling the oil price and then sustained it through the fall of the dollar, whose decline symbolizes the quality of Bush's economic stewardship.