Putin

A commonplace among Russia-watchers in the West is to see Putin's eight-year presidency as a retreat into autocracy after Yeltsin's chaotic experiment with freedom in the 1990s. Some hardliners even depict Putin, with his siloviki cronies (i.e. former or still serving members of the security services) as heir to the late Yuri Andropov, a KGB spymaster who went on to become Soviet leader.

Edward Lucas made the interesting point on BBC Radio Four’s Start the Week this morning, that almost unnoticed amid the weekend’s press coverage of Russia’s disputes with the British Council and Royal Academy, President Putin went to Bulgaria to sign a gas pipeline deal that closes a circle as elegantly, in its way, as Matisse’s La Danse.

While British liberals fret about the dismal state of democracy in Russia, and letterwriters take up their pens to protest the fate of many a new “dissident”, most Russians are more interested in their newfound freedom to renovate and redesign their flats or take foreign holidays than any liberty the ballot box can deliver.