THE PUGILIST

Angus Roxburgh, former BBC Moscow correspondent

It was when I worked as a consultant to the Kremlin for a few years, in the earlier part of Vladimir Putin’s rule, that all those bizarre pictures began to appear – bareback on a horse, doing the butterfly stroke in a freezing Siberian river, diving in the Black Sea and tagging Siberian tigers.

Most people assumed it was the idea of the Western PR agency for which I worked. But they were wrong. We were appalled by the pictures.

It was all Putin’s own idea – and said a lot about him. He clearly wanted to project himself as an action man, a strongman who got things done.

But the very fact he allowed the photos to be published betrayed the psychology that has driven his policies for the past 20 years – the bragging of a weakling who longs to be respected.

When Putin came to power in 1999 he vowed to restore Russia’s place in the world.

The country he inherited from Boris Yeltsin was in chaos. Millions had been reduced to poverty by Yeltsin’s reforms, and super-rich oligarchs effectively ran the country. There was certainly freedom of speech, but Moscow’s voice didn’t count on the international stage.

It certainly counts now. But Putin’s plan to make people respect Russia has spectacularly backfired.

In his first years, Putin was determined to be liked. He hobnobbed with President Bush and with Tony Blair, taking them to the opera in his beautiful home city, St Petersburg.

He declared he shared their values and helped out with the “war on terror” in Afghanistan.

But he was fiercely opposed to attacking Iraq and, when the UK and US went ahead in 2003 with what he thought was a disastrous, badly planned war, he fell out with them. He felt Russia’s voice counted for nothing.

When Nato took in new members in Eastern Europe, bringing what Putin saw as a hostile alliance right up to Russia’s borders, he was furious and vowed not to let Nato expand another inch.

In 2008 he attacked Russia’s southern neighbour, Georgia, and in 2014 he attacked Ukraine – both of which had been named as next in line to join Nato. And from 2015 he helped prop up his ally in Syria, Bashir al-Assad, with a ferocious bombing campaign. His message: Russia counts now!

Throughout his 20-year rule, Putin has become increasingly paranoid about his own position. He slowly muzzled almost all the media, and began to rig elections blatantly in his own favour. The parliament is now entirely obedient. And in just the past month riot police in Moscow have violently quelled pro-democracy demonstrations.

His crackdown on human rights, plus the brutality of his campaign in Syria – not to mention the poisonings of his enemies abroad, such as Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal – have left the Western public appalled by his ruthlessness.

The man who wanted to restore pride in Russia is now feared

– but not respected.

Angus Roxburgh is the author of Moscow Calling, Memoirs of a Foreign Correspondent