For 12 years Putin has guided his country with an uncanny intuition for the balance of power and oil. Having taken a pro-American stance after 9/11, in 2003 he dissociated himself from George W. Bush, a US president he had grown close to, over Iraq. In mid-decade, he presciently bet on Germany not as the sick man of Europe but the essential EU power. He began investing in China before the West had recognised its rise. Putin is now turning his diplomacy towards the EU again. He has long wanted to make Russia the most powerful European state. He wants the continent to return to the concert of powers that existed before the world wars, Nato and the EU. In a recent speech, Putin started playing on the West's fears of China by calling on the EU and Russia "to join forces or cede the world to others". The Kremlin now hopes to become the balancing power in Eurasia.

Putin will probably succeed in building an independent Russia, but an isolated and unmodernised one. The irony is that Putinist power politics have left the largest country in the world feeling surrounded, at times even hunted.