The Kremlin has emitted two critical signals in the span of a week, both designed to reinforce Vladimir Putin’s firm geopolitical ground. Having completed his victory lap in Syria and Egypt, he has announced a substantial pullout of Russian troops from embattled Syria. “Friends, the motherland is waiting for you,” he told the Russian soldiers. “You are coming back home with victory.” The starry-eyed euphoria over battlefield honours is now buttressed with the announcement that the President of Russia will run for re-election on 18 March. The developments are inter-related ~ the troop pullout in Syria and the next election for President. Bringing back some of the Russian forces ~ who are reportedly deployed alongside thousands of Kremlin-connected private contractors ~ is expected to boost his political prospects. Russian casualties in Syria are a closely guarded secret, as are the financial costs of the operation. In geopolitical terms, Putin’s war in Syria has turned out to be a profitable investment for the Kremlin. He may even have convinced the average Russian voter that the “terrorism” in Syria is actually political opposition to Assad.

The fact of the matter must be that while a large section of the populace has been confronting the repressive dictator, the forbidding challenge of the ISIS emanates from its anxiety to step into the vacuum. The Caliphate may have been crippled in Raqqa, but the threat remains fearsome. Putin may also be bidding to convince the electorate that Russian involvement in Syria has not been a disaster. He has exploited the western strategic disarray, most particularly America’s reluctance to be drawn deeper into the conflict, a geostrategic strand that somehow binds the regimes of Barack Obama and the volatile Donald Trump.

Well might Mr Putin claim the diplomatic high ground. Nonetheless, it is hard not to wonder why he has resolved to contest as an Independent ~ an electoral option that makes his domestic agenda ever so significant. A leader who has been at the helm since 1999, he will be Russia’s longest-serving President after Stalin should he win a fourth term… a triumph that seems almost certain. And yet after two decades in the Kremlin, he hasn’t spelt out the reason for the proposed paradigm shift in matters internal. Chiefly, he is “aiming into the future’’, primarily to make the country’s economy more flexible and enhance its efficiency. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, this is for the first time in 27 years that the Kremlin is anxious to “improve the quality of life” in a country that oscillates between chic consumerism and Soviet-style ideology. Markedly, he has dispensed with the support of his traditional party, United Russia, to contest as an Independent. No party label will guide Putin’s governance.