In spite of that, Russia is described in the press as though it were still the giant that in 1945 could justify its status as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council at the United Nations. The cover of the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, one of the world’s most august and influential publications on international relations, averred that Putin’s Russia was “down, but not out”. Seven of the 15 articles in that issue were devoted to discussing Russia’s geopolitical positioning. Would Foreign Affairs’s editorial priorities allow it to commit half an issue to the geopolitical positioning of Brazil and Indonesia, or even of the UK and France, nations which have at least as much economic clout as Russia? At a less sublime level, the Sun carried a story on September 7 which judged that, because of their military expenditure, “Russia and China could soon rival the US in terms of power and prestige”. The newspaper’s verdicts on major geopolitical questions may prompt chuckles rather than cause concern, but a trawl of many British newspapers in recent months would identify statements that are similar in drift and implication, although not so direct.

Why is there all this guff? The pathetic truth is that the media have started to worry about Russia, and to talk about it in such a hyperbolic and overstated way, since it embarked on military adventurism. The invasion of the Crimea in late February 2014 was both unexpected and delinquent. In the Atlantic Charter of 1941 the US and Britain agreed that they would renounce the use of force in their own territorial disputes; they would instead always seek authorisation from a newly-constituted future body, the United Nations, if such disputes arose. This notion — that force is unacceptable without UN endorsement — has been crucial to world order for over 70 years. But, when its stooge in Kiev was removed by democratic elections, Russia ignored the niceties and just walked in. Fighting between Ukraine and Novorussia (as the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lohansk People’s Republic sometimes call themselves) is much reduced, but tensions persist. No one doubts that Russia continues to back Novorussia and will do so with more weapons, if provoked. Over and above that, in autumn 2015, Russia started to back President Assad in the Syrian civil war. It fired 26 cruise missiles in early October — the first time it had used these weapons — supposedly aimed at terrorist targets. These pyrotechnics surprised and impressed many defence pundits.

It is only because of the use of force in Ukraine and Syria that Russia is again being talked about as a great power. Paradoxically, the period since early 2014 has been catastrophic for the Russian economy. In the last two and a half years it has been hit by the slump in oil and gas prices, the collapse in the rouble, and extensive damage to its international trade and financial flows due to the sanctions imposed after the Crimea invasion. Whereas GDP in current prices and exchange rates was at an all-time peak of over $2,200 billion in 2013, it fell in 2014, and crashed in 2015 and early 2016. Indeed, the 2016 number could be even lower than in 2015, with the IMF projecting $1,267 billion, little more than 30 per cent of Germany’s figure on the same basis.