Watching this process reminds me of the dark days of the cold war. Very quickly after the Second World War a whole new industry was formed around the ‘Kremlin Watchers’. These people would try to peer over the wall and through the wire into the hearts and minds of those running that weird amalgam called the USSR.

They would monitor speeches, analyse photographs and question Soviet officials all to discover who was in and who was out. That would then give them a hint as to which way the Russian and satellite political game was running. …read more