Mikhail Khodorkovsky is to be freed. After more than a decade dumped in the gulag for daring to challenge Vladimir Putin’s authority, the former head of the Yukos oil company is to be granted a presidential pardon. It would be a mistake to see this as change of heart in the Kremlin. More likely, as with the amnesty proposed for jailed Greenpeace activists and the Pussy Riot female punk band, it was the calculated gesture of an autocrat who sees advantage in occasional acts of supposed generosity.
By his own measure, Mr Putin has had a good year. The Russian president craves international respect. By stepping back from the world, the US ceded to Moscow space at the top table. Mr Putin likes to kid himself that Russia is America’s equal as a global superpower. Pardoning Mr Khodorkovsky was the act of someone who likes to pretend Russia is still the equal of the US.
Western vacillation over Syria gave Mr Putin an important diplomatic victory. Barack Obama had threatened to bomb Bashar al-Assad’s regime after its use of chemical weapons, but everyone knew the US president’s heart was not in it. As Mr Obama hesitated, David Cameron, Britain’s sabre-rattling prime minister, found his sword taken away from him by his own parliament. François Hollande, the French president, was left stranded at the altar of muscular interventionism.