...Second and fourth President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...'s gambit that Russia could change the course of the Ukraine revolution at gunpoint has failed a crucial test as the country's billionaire oligarchs line up behind Kiev.
Billionaire businessmen have accepted appointments from the pro-Western government in Kiev to act as regional governors in three Russia-leaning areas of the country. The fledgling government has also secured the important endorsement of the country's richest man.
Sergei Taruta, a sharp-suited industrialist who was last week named governor of the Russian-speaking Donbass region, bluntly accuses Mr Putin of sending provocateurs to create chaos on the streets to provide a pretext for Russia intervention.
A slight, bespectacled figure, Mr Taruta has for decades personnified the close links that tie the Ukrainian and Russian economies. He has run one of biggest steel operations in Europe, the Industrial Union of Donbass, in partnership with substantial Russian shareholders.
Like many businessmen pitched into national politics in a crisis, Mr Taruta takes a no-nonsense approach to the task of government. "I think of myself as the anti-crisis manager," he told The Telegraph. People in this region have gone through difficult days as they have watched trouble develop. In politics I am a dilettante, I am not a professional. I will only do it for six months or a year. In that time I want strong people to come into government and then I will leave them to it."