The big Russian bear just wants to be loved

Moscow

There’s no reason to be afraid. The growl of the Russian bear is worse than its bite. Forget the new generation of ballistic missiles that can punch a gaping hole in Washington’s defensive shield before it’s even been built. Ignore all those creaking Tupolev-95 Bear nuclear bombers testing the response times of the RAF’s Typhoon interceptors over the North Sea. And fret not about plucky little Putin’s heroic foray into darkest Persia, where he defied an assassination plot so that he could scheme with that crafty Iranian apocalyptist, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

At heart the Russians just want to be like you and me, easy-going, consumer-driven Europeans whose idea of the good life is paying off the mortgage, buying lots of designer clothes and watching football — preferably at one of those Premiership clubs they’ve bought up. If only those pesky Americans would stop rattling the bear’s cage with their creeping military expansionism into eastern Europe, the Baltic and Central Asia, Europe could be one big happy family. It’s just wherever the Russians look these days, whether it’s Ukraine or Iraq, all they see is the Stars and Stripes advancing towards them, which they find most unnerving, to say the least.

There is something almost reassuring about walking into the Kremlin these days. The ideological fanaticism that sustained decades of communist oppression is as dead as the embalmed remains of Comrade Lenin that languish in the dingy concrete sarcophagus outside.

Entering the command and control centre of Putin’s empire is like visiting the offices of an aspiring Third World company that one day hopes to join the international jet set, with glitzy offices in Mayfair or Park Avenue.