Something I wrote in 2011 but didn’t publish anywhere. Nonetheless there’s a certain timelessness to it, don’t you think?

Change nouns as appropriate and you could make a rubber stamp.

So, Medvedev gave a press conference, which he and Putin have done many times before, and he didn’t talk about the things that The Economist thought he should have. Which sends The Economist, and the Western MSM, into a paroxysm of speculation and minatory expostulation.

Big deal: maybe The Economist, and the rest of the Western MSM, should get a better grip on what’s happening in Russia. There are more stories in Russia than who the next President will be.