As he heads home from chilly Moscow, Jeroen van der Veer, Royal Dutch Shell’s chief executive, can reflect ruefully that things might have been worse.

He is coming away with $4.1bn (£2.1bn) in cash, a 27.5 per cent stake in an important project that now seems likely to proceed without much further trouble, and the consoling prospect that once the wounds have healed, he may be able to develop profitable opportunities in Russia.