Russia’s Ben Stiller ban is a sign of Putin’s desperation

What do Ben Stiller, Sean Penn, the chairman of the BBC, Piers Morgan, and, er, me, have in common? The answer is that we’ve all been banned from Russia. For some of us, that’s a blow. For others, an irrelevance. But for all of us, it’s a strange accolade: somehow Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin thinks we’re significant, dangerous or hostile enough to need to be kept out at all costs.

What level of insecurity does it take to worry that the screen Zoolander and Harvey Milk, respectively, represent a threat to the stability and integrity of the Russian Federation? And what desperation demands that this be done not quietly, if, as and when the need arose by simply denying a visa application (which is how all states can exclude unwanted visitors), but by a public, open-ended, formal ban?

Sean Penn, to be sure, famously said that he was ‘thinking about taking up arms against Russia’ (though he concluded that he wouldn’t).