When the man most likely to be America’s next ambassador to Russia, John Tefft, moves into the stately Spaso House embassy in Mo

When the man most likely to be America’s next ambassador to Russia, John Tefft, moves into the stately Spaso House embassy in Moscow, he will dwell there amid the iciest relations between the Kremlin and Washington since the dark days of the Iron Curtain. But Washington’s new representative in Moscow, a career diplomat who is a former top envoy to Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine, will also live in a Russia whose place in the post-Soviet order screams less Cold War and more hot mess. Tefft, 64, "is one of the finest experts on Russia and the post-Soviet states in the past three decades," says a U. S. ambassador to NATO in the last decade and undersecretary of state for political affairs from 2005 to 2008. "But Putin has made up his mind on Ukraine, so it would be feckless" to expect Tefft to help his country dislodge Russia from Crimea, the part of Ukraine it annexed in February and March. For Tefft, who, a State Department source says, is being summoned out of retirement after exiting the State Department last August when his ambassadorship to Ukraine ended, this is not your grandfather’s Cold War. As the Obama administration issues "blacklist" sanctions against Russian President Putin’s inner circle in retaliation for his Crimean land grab, Tefft faces growing resistance from American oil and consumer-goods companies with multibillion-dollar interests in the region. Adding to the pressure is foot-dragging by Europe, whose tepid sanctions highlight the spoiler role that major U. S. allies with big trade ties to Russia can play since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. In early April, the burly Tefft made a behind-the-scenes round of analysts in Moscow to gauge the Kremlin’s increasingly anti-American mood, according to private sector sources with whom he met. Currently the executive director of the Rand Business Leaders Forum, a clubby lobbying group focused on strategic issues involving Russia, the U. S. and Europe, Tefft declined to speak with a reporter, citing the diplomatic approval process now in process. A White House spokeswoman also declined to comment. The biggest conflict between Russia and the United States since the end of the Cold War comes as the American ambassador’s seat has sat functionally empty for more than three months. Although, since the Ukrainian crisis, all meaningful diplomacy with Russia is now conducted not at the ambassadorial level but between senior government ministers and officials, Tefft still "has an opportunity for much bolder diplomacy to drop in". Tefft’s imminent appointment comes after years of American neglect of Russia as a force to contend with. President Barack Obama’s move in 2009 to push a reset button aimed at gaining cooperation from the Kremlin on strategic issues such as Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and, later, Syria, got off to a famously bad start when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister, still in his job under Putin, with a red button that said not "reset" but "overload".