Resurrecting the Union

One of Vladimir Putin's more prominent flankers has been touring a factory, and has received a Sukhoi Su-35 as a souvenir. Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church have been cuddling up to one another, apparently because they both agree that the former Soviet republics have no business going away and having Orthodox Churches of their own. "Russia is not only a country," sermonised Patriarch Kirill; "it is a whole civilisation, it is a thousand-year story, a cultural melting-pot, of enormous power." Evidently Patriarch Kirill is dangerously close to delusions of Britishness.