The big missing point in today's Russia is the actual voice of the Russians. They have been accustomed to be muted by their government, perhaps like some Chinese condoning anything their dictatorial governments are doing, thinking their governments are not dictatorial.

Putin was able to dance above anyone's heads in Russia, with no one able to make him fall because none of the Russians were able to make him fall.

But there is a limit to any dictatorship. be it the price of bread that can topple governments or the use of the most heinous weapon ever produced; the Russians will not shrug and walk on. They will take note that they have a monster among their midst. At first opportunity, they will shred the dancing queen into pieces, never to be heard of again. Not even the Russians go as low as letting their leader soil their grounds with the deepest blackness that one nation can wrought on another.

So, good article, Sylvain, but the one point I would have liked you to have pronounced: the strength of Putin at home. Can he shoot someone unprovoked in broad daylight on Nevsky Prospekt and get away with it? I strongly doubt it though the Russian population has been behaving like gray mice. Still, Putin will be recognized as the mad man that he indeed really is (he belongs in the 20th century, or prior, not in the 21st century).