Vladimir Putin at the Valdai International Discussion Club in September 2010

'But I would like to remind you that in the wake of Kosovo we did not recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. We stopped short of that. As I said in public quite recently, we "swallowed" it. The only thing that I did at the time was to sign a decree on the development of economic relations with these territories. By the way, that was in line with United Nations requirements, because the UN was against the economic isolation of these territories. That was all. In principle, we were prepared for further dialogue.

'And yet armed forces were used. Some quarters are so fond of shooting and bombing that they thought they would succeed here too. Why did they think that they would succeed here when they had no success elsewhere, in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East? They failed here as well, and those who believe that it is the most effective instrument of foreign policy in the modern world will fail again and again.

'...One cannot behave in the world like a Roman emperor.'

I am reading Philip Short's biography of Putin. He went to my college.
Mr. Short, not Putin. Of Putin could be said what an apocryphal don who met
Napoleon said of him: 'It is easy to see that he did not go to
Cambridge'.

That was a favourite story of the ill-fated Professor Lord Pinkrose in Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy.