Just a couple of months ago it was fashionable to laud Vladimir Putin for his strategic genius. American rightwingers contrasted his sure-footedness with their own president’s alleged weakness. In a column entitled “Obama vs Putin, The Mismatch”, Charles Krauthammer argued: “Under this president, Russia has run rings around America.” Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, praised Mr Putin’s decisiveness and cooed: “That’s what you call a leader.” Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence party, said Mr Putin was the world leader he most admired.

How misplaced all this adulation looks after the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17. Russia’s apparent policy of supplying anti-aircraft missiles to the Ukrainian rebels was not simply immoral. It also gives the lie to the idea that Mr Putin is some kind of strategic genius. Instead he is revealed as a reckless gambler, whose paranoid and cynical policies are leading Russia into economic and political isolation.

The Kremlin’s mini Machiavelli believed he could destabilise eastern Ukraine while maintaining plausible deniability about Russia’s links to the separatist rebels.