MOSCOW — President Bush opened a diplomatically sensitive 24-hour visit here yesterday and moved immediately to smooth over days of prickly exchanges with President Vladimir Putin about past Soviet tyranny and Russia's current drift toward authoritarianism.

Bush and Putin embraced and smiled broadly as they greeted each other at the Russian presidential residence, then took a joyride in a vintage 1956 Soviet automobile and finally sat down to dinner together with their wives. The determined show of friendship appeared intended to demonstrate that the recent fracas about the Soviet legacy after World War II would not damage the relationship.

While aides said Bush raised concerns about Russian democracy during a private meeting with Putin, Bush decided to keep it behind closed doors, at least until leaving town.

Unlike normal practice overseas, the White House arranged a schedule in which Bush will give no speech or news conference while in Moscow to avoid spoiling Putin's big moment today as he hosts dozens of world leaders for a Red Square celebration of the 60th anniversary of the World War II victory over Nazi Germany.

"I am looking forward to the celebration tomorrow," Bush said in brief comments at Putin's country dacha tucked among birch trees outside Moscow. "It is a moment where the world will recognize the great bravery and sacrifice the Russian people made in the defeat of Nazism. The people of Russia suffered incredible hardship, and yet the Russian spirit never died out."

GERALD HERBERT / AP Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Bush climb into a vintage Volga yesterday to drive to dinner at Putin's private residence compound outside Moscow.

In praising Russian courage, he left out his balancing assessments of recent days when he pointed out that the end of World War II ushered in a half-century of Soviet oppression for Central and Eastern Europe. Aides said that in the session they attended, Bush did not bring up the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 that resulted in Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, an agreement U.S. officials had urged Putin to renounce.

"There's a lot more to our relationship with Russia than just this discussion," national-security adviser Stephen Hadley said afterward. He added: "The history has been pretty well discussed here in the run-up to this event tomorrow." For Bush, "his focus really is, without denigrating in any way the history, trying to focus, as I said, on moving forward."

The flap has threatened to eclipse the planned Victory Day celebration in which Bush will join Putin and more than 50 other leaders in reviewing a military parade in front of Lenin's tomb on Red Square and then attend a luncheon in the Kremlin. To note the mixed meaning of the anniversary, Bush stopped in Latvia, a tiny Baltic republic consigned to Moscow rule after the war.

Bush's statements and itinerary drew resentful rebukes from Putin and his government. In comments before Bush's arrival, Putin said no apology was needed for Molotov-Ribbentrop because the pact was declared null and void in 1989. His aides renewed the old Stalinist argument that there was no occupation because the Baltic states supposedly asked to join the Soviet Union.

In a bid to coax Putin into acknowledging past mistakes, Bush gave a speech Saturday in Riga, the Latvian capital, in which he said the United States also shared some blame for the division of postwar Europe because of President Franklin Roosevelt's participation in the Yalta conference of 1945. The successive Communist takeover of half of Europe, Bush added, was "one of the greatest wrongs of history."

U.S. and Russian officials insisted the dustup was actually a sign of the strong ties between the two leaders. "It simply again underscores that these two men have developed a relationship in which they can talk about any subject and talk about it in a constructive and friendly manner," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used similar language: "This is an excellent relationship between these two men. They feel that they can discuss anything."

Yet Hadley said they did not discuss Putin's recent declaration that the collapse of the Soviet Union was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." At a briefing, Hadley said the comment had to be considered in context and would not say whether the United States accepted Putin's interpretation.

There were light moments between the two leaders as well.

The men took a spin on the grounds of Putin's estate in a shiny, white 1956 Soviet Volga sedan. Bush took the wheel and a giggling Putin announced from the passenger's seat: "I'm having so much fun, we're going for another lap."

They joked about first lady Laura Bush's comic performance at a Washington gala last week in which she poked fun at her husband's early bedtimes and lack of Texas ranch bona fides.

Bush arrived in Moscow yesterday evening after spending the morning in the Netherlands honoring the sacrifice of U.S. soldiers in World War II. On a cold, drizzly day that at one point saw light hail fall, Bush laid a wreath at a cemetery filled with U.S. war dead, shook hands with some of their surviving compatriots and contemplated the meaning for today's generation.

"The world's tyrants learned a lesson," Bush told an audience of several thousand Americans and Dutch gathered amid rows and rows of white marble headstones rising from immaculate grassy fields. "There is no power like the power of freedom and no soldier as strong as a soldier who fights for that freedom."

With 8,301 graves, including those of 40 sets of brothers, the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in the village of Margraten outside Maastricht was first established by advancing U.S. forces in November 1944 and eventually became the largest U.S. military cemetery in Europe outside France. Local residents "adopt" graves to tend and leave flowers occasionally. Small children spent the day before Bush's visit planting U.S. and Dutch flags.

Information from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.