They daubed their faces with the Russian tricolour, sang old Soviet songs and waved banners. They cheered as President Vladimir Putin, clad in sports jacket and black turtleneck, promised an ever brighter future for Russia. And they yowled when he warned that enemies inside and outside the country were plotting to undermine it.

There, at a 5,000-strong pro-Putin rally in Moscow’s Luzhniki sports stadium a week ago, were to be found all the contradictions of Mr Putin’s Russia: a national pride and self-confidence rediscovered after its 1990s economic decline, coupled with a paradoxical and near-paranoid suspicion of the west.