Is Putin’s playbook finally being used against him?

‘Where we deploy our own troops within our own borders is nobody’s business but our own,’ Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said a few months ago, as tens of thousands of Russian soldier gathered close to the border with Ukraine. ‘They pose no threat to anybody.’

Now, with Russia’s brutal invasion of the neighbouring country stretching into its fifth week, president Vladimir Putin’s credibility is dead, along with his reputation as a master strategist and countless young men he sent in to wage what was supposed to be a swift war. However, the tactics he has used time and time again to undermine his opponents, wrong-foot the West, and stretch red lines as far as they will go, have clearly found favour in another conflict threatening to break out between two former Soviet Republics.

More than a thousand miles south of Moscow, across the Caucasus mountains, a tense standoff is unfolding over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.