The western nations are finding it difficult to deal with the two-headed government in Moscow with Premier Vladimir Putin, still the dominant partner to President Dmitry Medvedev, occupying what is technically the subservient role, a media report said on Thursday.

American and European officials dealing with Russian government to resolve the Georgian conflict concede that it is Putin who maintains the real power.

But they feel compelled to follow diplomatic protocol that requires them to focus their negotiating efforts on Medvedev, who succeeded Putin in May to become the head of state, the New York Times said in a report.

When French President Nicolas Sarkozy rushed to Moscow earlier this month to mediate the crisis over Georgia, he found the new Russian President Medvedev to be calm, even sanguine about prospects for a solution, the daily said.

But the tone was wildly different when Sarkozy heard from president-turned-prime minister Vladimir Putin, the paper said quoting a private report that Sarkozy later delivered to President George Bush.

Putin, it was quoted as saying, was virulent in denouncing Georgian actions as atrocities.

Sarkozy's report, made in a telephone call to President Bush on August 13, has added to a sense of bewilderment in Washington about how to deal with what is now a two-headed government in Moscow.

"This is a strange couple," a French official told the paper of Medvedev and Putin. American officials, the paper said, accept that they do not completely understand the balance of power within the Russian leadership.

They tiptoe around the question of whether there really are significant policy differences between the Russian leaders, or whether the conflicting signals simply reflect the men's characters and temperaments, it said.

It is possible, they said, that the Russian leaders are very much in sync but playing a Kremlin version of "good cop-bad cop."

But while it was Medvedev who signed the cease-fire agreement that calls for Russia to withdraw its forces from Georgia, it remains far from clear whether Moscow will comply fully with that accord, the Times said, adding that Russian military forces were still shoring up positions inside Georgia on Thursday.

Some American officials suggested that Medvedev might have been overruled by Putin, who may not share Medvedev's apparent concern about the impact of the war on Russia's finances, markets and trade relations.

Another sign that Medvedev's authority was limited emerged even before the Georgia crisis, after the Russian president joined leaders of other G8 nations in Japan to sign a statement criticising Zimbabwe for the sham election held after weeks of violence.

Within days, Russia then reversed course, using its veto at the UN Security Council to block actions that would have punished Zimbabwe for its stance, the paper noted.