European Union leaders began meeting in Finland on Friday, hoping to forge a common policy towards Moscow over its massive energy resources while promising to tackle Russian President Vladimir Putin over human rights at a dinner later.
European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso warned against over-politicising the EU-Russia energy debate, which appeared set to dominate the informal EU summit in Lahti, southern Finland.
"It is a mistake, the over-politicisation of the debate on energy. We are not trying to have a politics of energy. What is important is that basic principles of transparency, openness and reciprocity are also respected," Barroso told reporters.
Most major capitals have till now dealt with Russia over energy on a bilateral basis.
Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said the dinner with Putin would be a chance to have an open and frank discussion "on all the questions".
Rights group Amnesty International summed up the feelings of those countries which would like the 25-nation bloc to adopt a tougher line on Russia. The camp including several EU members from eastern Europe.
Energy questions were important but should not be allowed to override all other issues, the London-based pressure group said in a statement, talking of Russia's "onslaught on freedom of expression and association".
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was certainly stressing the energy angle.
"What we must make clear is that we offer security for (energy) contracts and we expect the same from Russia," in matters of contract security and market access, she said.
Despite some member states' strong interest in talking about energy, Vanhanen said that he saw no problem in talking about Russia's treatment of Georgians and the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
"We can't exchange human rights for energy production," assured European Parliament president Josep Borrell said.
"We would like to see our neighbours as partners with predictable behaviour. What happened with Georgia was not predictability and not the picture we would like to see," said Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip.
A future partnership and cooperation agreement with Russia, on which the EU hopes to start talks next month, should certainly take into account economic interests but also "the political situation regarding human rights and the rule of law".
Moscow's ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, dismissed EU concerns about Russia as "completely exaggerated" and insisted that Russia did not intend to use its energy resources for political leverage.
"The EU has become a more important but also a more difficult partner," Chizhov told AFP on the plane to Finland on Thursday.
Russia is the world's second biggest oil producer after Saudi Arabia and supplier of around a quarter of all natural gas consumed in the European Union.
Moscow's recent hard-nosed approach to foreign energy investors has shaken its European partners, who are eager for a more balanced cooperation on energy issues.
In particular, the Europeans are concerned about Russia's recent decision to develop the huge Shtokman gas field without foreign partners and threats to halt, on environmental grounds,a project off Russia's Pacific coast run by Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell.
Those incidents came after Russian giant Gazprom switched off the gas taps to Ukraine in January amid a price war, hitting some supplies to Europe and awakening the EU to the power of energy as a foreign policy tool.
Putin has said he will guarantee and even increase Russian energy supplies to Europe but that in return Russian firms must be given access to Europe's retail energy market.
European officials respond that Russia must therefore open up its own energy market to greater competition and foreign investment, and have criticised the monopoly of the gas market held by state-owned Gazprom.
The Lahti meeting is to prepare the ground for a formal EU-Russia summit on November 24.