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

Zhirinovsky was a fool's bladder on a fascist stick, using his cruel wit to malign opponents of Vladimir Putin, further the Kremlin's far-right agenda and consign his immortal soul to darkness. I met him once and reader, do not be surprised, we ended up shouting at each other.

The fall of the Soviet Union delivered real change. The old nonesense of Communism did start to die, but far more slowly than appreciated back then. Ordinary Russians for the first time in their lives could read honest newspapers, watch good telly, go abroad, buy fancy foreign cars, own their own homes. The idea of a free market was embraced, but a system without the functioning machinery of the rule of law was bound to struggle. The rhetoric of a free market masked the reality of a bloody anarchy where the people who came out on top were the most cunning, the most pitiless and the greediest. Russia turned into an oligarchy, the country's resources carved up and seized by a few rich men, but an oligarchy with democratic lipstick. [...] The problem was that political power was in the wrong hands. As the nineties wore on, Boris Yeltsin morphed from being an inspirational and courageous leader, willing to stand up on a tank to defend Russia's infant democracy, into a senile alcoholic, guarded by some of his hopelessly corrupt family. The president of Russia needed to be fighting like a tiger to stand up for the rule of law, to defend democratic principles, to strengthen Russia's fragile open society. Instead, he took the pith.

The Chechens had humiliated the might of Russia in the First Chechen War (1994–6), which [Boris] Yeltsin had started in a drunken rage. The Russian Army had fought the war with great brutality and greater incompetence. The Chechens fought them to a kind of stalemate, partly because Yeltsin, when he had sobered up, realized that he had been stupid and cruel.