The Times (Great Britain): "Vlad the Vulnerable"
The good news for Vladimir Putin as a famously keen skier is that the snow is close to perfect. The bad news is that he opens the World Economic Forum in Davos today diminished as an international figure by the global financial crisis, and challenged at home as Prime Minister in ways he never was as President.
Mr Putin has accepted the invitation to Davos because, for all his feigned indifference to world opinion, he cares about it deeply. That is as true of his role in Russia's latest gas dispute with Ukraine as it was of his decisions to go to war in Georgia last year and Chechnya before that. In normal times Davos would have offered the ideal platform from which to burnish Russia's prestige and pursue its policy goals.
But these are not normal times. Until last September Mr Putin was able to pretend, at least to himself, that Russia was immune from the worst effects of the credit crunch. After eight years' continuous growth it boasted the world's third-largest currency reserves and a unique form of capitalism based largely on personal relationships between the Kremlin and favoured oligarchs.
Since last July the oil revenues on which the Putin phenomenon was based have collapsed: in six months the price of Urals crude has fallen by 68 per cent. More than $100 billion of reserves have been spent supporting troubled banks and the rouble, which has nevertheless been allowed to slide by nearly a third against the dollar.
Mr Putin's plans for the Russian military are as grandiose as for the economy, and as hobbled by reality. He and his protégé, President Medvedev, have sent flotillas to Venezuela and the Mediterranean as well as tanks into Georgia, but according to the latest independent assessment of Russia's armed forces the entire Navy boasts one seaworthy aircraft carrier, shadowed everywhere by two tugs in case of breakdown.
The first cracks in the formidable edifice of Mr Putin's popularity are beginning to appear. Recent protests in Vladivostok over increased car import tariffs were suppressed by interior ministry troops flown to the Far East across eight time zones because local police could not be trusted. Anticipating further unrest as increases in living costs outstrip those of incomes for the first time in nearly a decade, Moscow has suspended jury trials for accused ringleaders.
Mr Putin has indicated that he will use his speech to promote the G20 as the right forum for reform of global financial institutions. He is right that Russia, China, India and Brazil should be involved, but he is also making a virtue of necessity: because of his minimal respect for democracy, Russian membership of the G8 has become an embarrassment. He will also insist today, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, that Russia is a reliable year-round energy supplier.
The truth is that Mr Putin and his advisers nurture a sense of betrayal by the West in its failure adequately to respect Russian national interests since the Soviet collapse. This is a narrow view of history to which Team Putin could cling as long as an energy boom underpinned its growing power at home and abroad. That boom is over. Mr Putin remains politically powerful, but geopolitically he is weakened. He comes to Davos not to crow but to make the difficult case that Russia is no longer a maverick on the world stage. Candour and conciliation should be his watchwords.
