The corpse of Russia’s ambassador Andrey Karlov arrives in Moscow, 20 December. (c) Valery Sharifullin / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.
The assassination of Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov in Ankara is not just an individual crime and tragedy, it may also be a symptom of a wider trend. Western doomsayers have rushed to talk about Vladimir Putin as “winning” in 2016. In its annual crass celebration of personalism (and eager exercise in clickbait), Forbes magazine again named him their “Man of the Year”. But after a year or two of circling, Putin’s vultures may be coming home to roost.
The assassination of Karlov was predictably and prematurely cast as somewhere between the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 and the killing of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi in 2012 — the harbinger of global war or domestic recrimination, respectively. It certainly is not the former.
