The sour western comments on Vladimir Putin’s latest – and final? – annual address to the nation last week are only the most recent in a series of damaging rhetorical exchanges, fuelled on both sides by domestic considerations rather than a sensible understanding of the best interests of either. Some of the lang­uage is reminiscent of the cold war, even though today there is no compar­able clash of interests between Russia and the west.

It is partly a matter of disappointed love. We have come a long way from the hopes that seemed to unite Russia and the west after the Soviet Union collapsed. Two years ago Mr Putin described that collapse as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the cent­ury”. He was greeted by a storm of criticism in the west: was the Russian president really calling for the return of the old regime? Was the spectre of Stalin stalking Europe yet again?