Putin is busy putting more touches on his Tsarist authoritarianism and letting President-elect Joe Biden know that the old Soviet proposition of "peaceful coexistence" is today questionable at best, now that Vladimir's U.S. handmaiden has been jerked from his kneepads. The Washington Post:
In recent weeks, Russia has launched a flurry of missile tests, while Putin boasted Monday of a "cosmic" rate of change in Russia’s advanced weaponry....
He laid flowers Sunday at a monument to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, calling its work "extremely important," days after the agency was accused of unprecedented hacking of U.S. agencies.
A blizzard of recent legislation in the State Duma has made it harder to protest, easier to target opposition figures and activists and has given authorities broad scope to brand individuals as "foreign agents," with five-year jail penalties for failure to meet reporting requirements. The government is also moving to curb foreign Internet sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Under new laws, Putin has immunity from prosecution for life, and information about the financial and personal affairs of millions of members of Russian intelligence bodies, security agencies, the judiciary, law enforcement, regulatory agencies and the military — and their relatives — is classified.
And Trump is intensely jealous.