On top of all that, the money has run out. Russia's economy remains precariously balanced on a narrow base of natural resource industries that are shamefully obsolescent. The cold snap in Europe highlighted the inability of Russia's gas industry to supply its customers reliably. The corrupt political and bureaucratic machine that Putin has created grows like a cancer, monstrously parasitical on the rest of the economy. Each year the burden grows, as more and more snouts cram into the trough. The resulting system is dependent not just on a high oil price, but a rising one. Its survival is an arithmetical impossibility. 

The regime's response to the protests has been revealingly weak. Gimmicks and disconnected rhetorical flourishes paint a picture of confusion. Putin contemptuously dismissed the protesters, claiming to believe that the white ribbons were condoms, and the cause was safe sex. His aides portray them as spoiled Muscovites, out of touch with the real Russia. Others invoke the spectre of Western interference, claiming that opposition leaders are in the pay of the State Department or MI6. 

The harshest term of derision is the "orange plague" — a reference to the revolution in Ukraine in 2004-05, also sparked by vote-rigging, which toppled the bureaucratic and corrupt regime of Leonid Kuchma. Propagandists highlight both the Western involvement in those events (many of the leading activists had ties to American-financed democracy-promotion programmes) and to the disappointing aftermath (the "orange" politicians, having eventually won the elections, proved just as corrupt and incompetent as their predecessors). That cuts little ice now. The West in its current woebegone state hardly seems capable of intrusive manipulation of Russian politics. And hacked emails from pro-Putin public figures now available on the internet reveal a degree of cynicism and dirty tricks that further erode the regime's authority and dignity.

Putin loyalists have also summoned up big but unconvincing counter-demonstrations, of factory workers and government employees who readily admit that they are paid to attend. Putin has made concessions too — restoring elections for governors in Russia's provinces, and cracking down on one of the most unpopular bureaucratic privileges, the abuse of police-style sirens and blue lights. He has conceded that he may have to face a run-off election, rather than winning the presidency outright (a big sign of weakness). The only really serious change has been to allow opposition figures on television: but that has dangers of its own. It is harder to demonise them or dismiss them as marginal when they have been allowed into the sanctuary of the regime's propaganda temple. 

As so often in the past, the regime is offering a simulacrum of reform, rather than the real thing. The difference this time is that the public minds about being misled.