MOSCOW — Pragmatism is likely to trump ideology as leaders of the Group of Eight top industrial democracies gather for a Russian-hosted summit in St. Petersburg this weekend.

But some experts warn that the organization's "Russia problem" - the Kremlin's deepening authoritarian drift - will hang over the meeting like a pall, and could even threaten the G8's long-term credibility.

"The leaders of western democracies have every reason to downplay this paradox, that they have an undemocratic Russia sitting at the head table and dictating the G8's agenda," says Lilia Shevtsova, an expert with the Carnegie Centre in Moscow.

"They will certainly paper over their differences, and make nice for the cameras, but this is a problem that is not going away," she said.

Russia was admitted to the G8 in 1998 amid hopes that membership would help it evolve more rapidly into a western-style democracy with a market-driven economy.

But since Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999, first as prime minister and then a two-term president, the country's political development has gone into reverse in the eyes of many critics.

Under Putin, Russia has seen seven years of robust economic growth, partly driven by the ever rising price of the country's main export, petroleum.

But at the same time the Kremlin, often acting through state-run firms, has seized control of the country's TV networks, shut down independent newspapers and slashed the scope for media debate.

Changes to electoral laws have rolled-back democracy and stacked the deck in favour of the pro-Kremlin colossus, the United Russia party.

Many non-governmental groups say they fear recent legislation regulating NGO's, and a new law that defines some kinds of criticism of authorities as "extremism" will be used to quash any activities that don't toe the Kremlin line.

"We are returning to Soviet times in the political sense," complains Dmitri Furman, an expert with the official Institute of European Studies in Moscow.

"We have highly centralized authority, a strict top-down command structure, and they are even trying to restore the one party state," he said. "It's not quite the same, of course, but you might call this Soviet-lite."

The Kremlin denies any backsliding on democracy. In an Internet news conference last week, Putin insisted that Russia's "democracy is in good hands and developing in the right direction."

And Putin told CTV news in an interview Tuesday that he saw ulterior motives in criticism levelled at Moscow over its democratic record.

"I think this permanent criticism against the issues related to democracy, freedom of media, those are just used as an instrument to interfere into domestic and foreign policies of Russia with a view to affect and influence our policies," Putin told CTV.

However, Putin said in an interview Wednesday with the NBC that he was nevertheless "glad that we have critics."

"It would be worse if there were one voice, as it was in the time of the Soviet Union at meetings of the Communist party," a transcript of the interview quoted him as saying. "If we hear both critical and positive observations, it means that we have the possibility of better orienting ourselves toward what we're doing."

Still, critics say the G8 faces a challenge in continuing co-operation with Moscow in practical areas such as energy security, nuclear technology and anti-terrorism while Russia steadily violates the organization's core values.

"I'm afraid that following the G8 summit, the ideological gulf between Russia and the West will re-emerge more intensely than ever," said Dmitri Suslov, an expert with the independent Council on Foreign Relations and Defence Policy in Moscow.

"The U.S. is busy dividing the world into free and unfree parts for the first time since the Cold War, and Russia is clearly being fitted in the latter category," he said.

"And, in fact, there are some tendencies in Russian policy that might encourage the West to think of it as an authoritarian country that's pursuing neo-imperialist policies in its own neighbourhood."

During a visit to Moscow two weeks ago, Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay suggested that western countries might raise their concerns about Russia's authoritarian drift during the "miscellaneous items" portion of the summit.

"Every country has to be prepared to do some introspection if they want to be part of this larger group, and Russia is no exception," MacKay said.

But some Russian experts suggest the G8 shouldn't try to reform Russia, but rather move to embrace greater diversity in its own membership.

"Russia's entry into the G8 has posed a challenge to the narrow definitions of what the organization should be," says Timofei Bordachov, deputy editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a foreign policy journal.

"It needs to move beyond being some kind of exclusive club of rich western democracies, and take in important new members like India, China and Brazil. Russia has opened the door to this."