I would be wary of portraying Putin in too bad a light. The Russia that he inherited was deeply insecure with itself – a bit like the UK in the last 70s – and so one of his jobs is to try to build up national estime, in much the same way as Thatcher did in the UK.

Also, he was stuck with a position where a lot of finanical clout had been handed out in a fairly arbitrary process. He has, in many ways entirely sensibly, set out to reverse this procedure.

Yes, there are real problems in Russia – large scale corruption and a failure to observe the rule of law amongst the most concerning. I was somewhat cheered to read that a recent survey revealed that now only 57% of checks by the traffic police resulted in bribes rather than 75% a couple of years ago, but these are still very high figures!

Other signs are also encouraging; the transport infrastructure around St Petersburg is definitely improving (and it will have to as car sales are booming)

So lets keep things in perspective. Remember, the UK government isn’t averse to harrasing the odd dissident to his death (c.f. Dr Kelly) when it suits them so while things are bad on a much larger scale in Russia we maybe have more in common than we would sometimes like to believe.