When the Soviet Union collapsed, Yavlinsky set out sober, sensible reforms which would lead to a properly policed free market. His ideas were passed … - John Sweeney

Putin is a rational actor inside a bunker, so deep, so deprived of light and information, that he is pulling levers without understanding how the modern world is responding, without understanding that some of his levers at least are no longer working, without understanding that invading countries at peace is what the Nazis did.

The reality was for a long time that Putin, when facing off against Navalny, felt fear. People forget that before the 'swaggering... sneery... dismissive' strong man Putin, witnessed during the time of the Iraq War by Alastair Campbell, there existed a weak man Putin, who carried the bags of Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St Petersburg; who meekly said 'yes, boss, no boss' to Boris Berezovsky when the oligarch was fishing around for a replacement for Boris Yeltsin; who conned the Yeltsin family too with his subservient act; then did the same thing for Blair and George W. Bush. The tricky thing to get your head around is that weak man Putin was a performance but it was also part of the truth, that when up against an unflinching enemy, he has history of backing down, of being far more fearful than the far better understood sneery side of his character would suggest.

In Ceausescu's Romania madness was enthroned, sanity a disease.