Russia finally signs up to Kyoto ...but why?

It's sort of yestserday news that Putin has announced that Russia now okays Kyoto after almost a year (or even more) hesitation and sending mixed signals to the West.
What's interesting though is the reasoning behind it. Unlike say Canada when the Kyoto protocol is being pushed by the environmental lobby, some prefer to call them eco-nazi :-), Russian officials are blunt about Kyoto's purely political nature.
The article in Russian magazine Novoe Vremia from which I've lifted the qoutes below is entilted "The protocls of the Kyoto Elders" (the title is an allusion to the infamous Protocols of Sion Elders - people from media studies - isn't that funny?).

The Director of the Institute for the Issues of Climate and Ecology of the Russian Academy of Science Yuri Israel:
"The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) would like to confirm again that the Kyoto protocol is ineffective and scientifically unproven"

Yuri Osipov, president of the RAN
"The deicision on Kyoto is purely political, there is no science behind it."

Minister of Industrial Enegry, Khristenko shares sceptics' attitude on both, scientific and economic grounds, in regard to Kyoto. However he pointed out that
"In essense, the Kyoto protocol creates a new segment on the global market and this segment is interesting and promising."