When the Kremlin decided that it was foolish to keep sending yet more of its boys to die here, the Russian Army hit reverse gear. And as they did so,… - John Sweeney

Sergei Sobyanin is a semolina pudding Putin loyalist, has been mayor of Moscow since 2010 and has a distinguished academic record. Actually, I made that last bit up. He did write a thesis for his degree on 'The subject of the Russian Federation in the economic and social development of the state. The competence of government bodies and methods of its implementation', but whole chunks were, according to a Russian anti-plagiarism website, copied on pages 32 to 35, 90 to 91, 105, 149 to 153, 161 to 165, 168 to 183, 185 to 194, and so on. If you get the drift, you get the pattern.

September 1999 is the time, the way I see it, when Russia ceases to be a democracy. The Moscow apartment bombings were Vladimir Putin's original sin, and any Russian who dared to investigate them lived in mortal danger.

It's his [Dmitry Peskov's] standard patter: ironically raise the possibility that the killings had something to do with his boss, then deny it, leaving both versions to drift like tumbleweed in the wind.